Philosophy

Δημοσιευμένο το 1942 από τον Γάλλο συγγραφέα Αλμπέρ Καμί, το «Ο ξένος» θεωρείται εδώ και καιρό κλασικό έργο της λογοτεχνίας του εικοστού αιώνα. Η Le Monde το κατατάσσει στην πρώτη θέση της λίστας της «Τα 100 βιβλία του αιώνα». Μέσα από αυτή την ιστορία ενός συνηθισμένου ανθρώπου που, άθελά του, εμπλέκεται σε έναν παράλογο φόνο σε μια ηλιόλουστη αλγερινή παραλία, ο Καμί εξερευνά αυτό που αποκάλεσε «τη γυμνότητα του ανθρώπου απέναντι στο παράλογο».

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has not ceased to stir vigorous debate since its first publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or ‘social contract’, that should exist between all the citizens of a state and that should be the source of sovereign power. From this fundamental premise, he goes on to consider issues of liberty and law, freedom and justice, arriving at a view of society that has seemed to some a blueprint for totalitarianism, to others a declaration of democratic principles.

In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and alienated from the world of modern civilization. In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau analyses with unique insight the relationship between an elusive but essential inner self and the variety of social identities he was led to adopt. The book vividly illustrates the mixture of moods and motives that underlie the writing of defiancé and vulnerability, self-exploration and denial, passion, puzzlement, and detachment. Above all, Confessions is Rousseau's search, through every resource of language, to convey what he despairs of putting into the personal quality of one's own existence.

'The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short' Written during the chaos of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan asks how, in a world of violence and horror, can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy? Hobbes' case for a 'common-wealth' under a powerful sovereign - or 'Leviathan' - to enforce security and the rule of law, shocked his contemporaries, and his book was publicly burnt for sedition the moment it was published. But his penetrating work of political philosophy - now fully revised and with a new introduction for this edition - opened up questions about the nature of statecraft and society that influenced governments across the world.