New Books Network
Philosophy
Philosophy December 31, 2021

Grief

A Philosophical Guide

Michael Cholbi

Hosted by Robert Talisse
We think of grief as a normal response to the death of a loved one. We’re familiar with the so-called “five stages” of grief. Grief seems as an emotional episode …

Philosophy

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Interviews with philosophers about their new books.

Politics & Polemics December 20, 2021

Intolerable

Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980)

Edited by Kevin Thompson and Perry Zurn

Hosted by Kirk Meighoo
Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980) (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), edited by Kevin Thompson and Perry Zurn, is a groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault …
Philosophy January 20, 2022

The Analects: A Guide

Erin M. Cline

Hosted by Malcolm Keating
Probably the most well-known Chinese philosopher around the world is Kongzi, typically called by his Latinized name, “Confucius.” And yet he did not write a single book. Rather, his students …
Philosophy January 10, 2022

Creolizing the Nation

Kris F. Sealey

Hosted by Sarah Tyson
Can the concept of the nation be a resource for liberatory political struggle? Are the dangers of nationalism simply too great? In Creolizing the Nation (Northwestern UP, 2020), Kris F …
Philosophy December 1, 2021

Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States

Should Citizens Pay for Their States' Wrongdoings?

Avia Pasternak

Hosted by Robert Talisse
We tend to think that states can act wrongfully, even criminally. Thus, we also tend to think that states can be held responsible for their acts. They can be made …
Philosophy November 19, 2021

Reconsidering the Life of Power

Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy

James Garrison

Hosted by Malcolm Keating
Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy by James Garrison (SUNY Press 2021), argues that the tradition of Confucian philosophy can provide …
Philosophy November 10, 2021

Living as a Bird

Vinciane Despret

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
Birds sing to set up a territory, but the relationships between the bird, the song, the territory, and the bird’s community are highly complex and individually variable. In Living as …
Language November 3, 2021

Making AI Intelligible

Philosophical Foundations

Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever

Hosted by Malcolm Keating
In their open-access publication, Making AI Intelligible: Philosophical Foundations (Oxford University Press, 2021), Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever argue that philosophers of language can contribute to a deeper understanding of …
Philosophy November 1, 2021

Reasons First

Mark Schroeder

Hosted by Robert Talisse
A leading approach in ethics takes the reason as in some sense primary or basic. This approach claims that a range of moral concepts – goodness, rightness, obligation, and so …
Philosophy October 20, 2021

The Politics of Black Joy

Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-Abolitionism

Lindsey Stewart

Hosted by Sarah Tyson
What can southern Black joy teach us about agency? What role does refusal have in liberation? What more might there be to root work than resistance? In The Politics of …
Philosophy October 11, 2021

Artful Truths

The Philosophy of Memoir

Helena de Bres

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
What is a memoir? What makes a memoir both nonfictional and literary? What are the memoirist’s moral obligations to the people they write about besides themselves, and to their potential …
Philosophy October 1, 2021

The Dialogical Roots of Deduction

Historical, Cognitive, and Philosophical Perspectives on Reasoning

Catarina Dutilh Novaes

Hosted by Robert Talisse
If all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, then it must be that Socrates is mortal. What could be more obvious? Well, sometimes obviousness serves to conceal philosophical …
Philosophy September 20, 2021

Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology

A Complete and Annotated Translation of the Tattva-cintā-maṇi

Stephen Phillips (trans.)

Hosted by Malcolm Keating
In the first complete English translation of a monumental 14th century Sanskrit philosophical text, the Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology (Bloomsbury 2020), Stephen Phillips introduces modern readers to …
Philosophy September 10, 2021

Leveraging Distortions

Explanation, Idealization, and Universality in Science

Collin Rice

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
Most of us agree that science aims to tell us what is true about the world. But how do we get at the truth by using theories and models that …
Philosophy September 1, 2021

The Mismeasure of the Self

A Study in Vice Epistemology

Alessandra Tanesini

Hosted by Robert Talisse
Epistemology traditionally focuses on the analysis of central epistemological concepts, such as knowledge, justification, evidence, truth, and belief. But having knowledge is also a matter of acquiring knowledge. And this …
Philosophy August 20, 2021

Nos/Otras: Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Multiplicitous Agency, and Resistance

Andrea J. Pitts

Hosted by Sarah Tyson
How can we think together multiplicity and agency? How can we resist oppression and build transformative political coalitions while attending to the ambivalences and incommensurabilities born of the collective conditions …
Philosophy August 10, 2021

When Maps Become the World

Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
There are maps of the Earth’s landmasses, the universe, the ocean floors, human migration, the human brain: maps are so integral to how we interact with the world that we …
Philosophy August 2, 2021

The Right to Know

Epistemic Rights and Why We Need Them

Lani Watson

Hosted by Robert Talisse
We often talk as if individuals have entitlements to certain kinds of information: medical test results, political representatives’ voting records, crime statistics, and the like. We also talk as if …
Philosophy July 20, 2021

Buddhist Feminism

Transforming Anger against Patriarchy

Sokthan Yeng

Hosted by Malcolm Keating
How can Buddhism and feminism be brought together in a constructive way to challenge patriarchial structures? What could such a philosophy say about anger over injustice and oppression? In Buddhist …
Philosophy July 9, 2021

The World in the Wave Function

A Metaphysics for Quantum Physics

Alyssa Ney

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
Quantum mechanics is full of weird findings – for example, that systems widely separated can somehow still be correlated, and that a system may be in two different possible states …