Best of OUP Philosophy | Discover our top titles from 2020

Academic

Best of Philosophy from Oxford University Press | 2020

To celebrate another remarkable year of Philosophy scholarship, we have curated a collection of free chapters from the twenty most popular Philosophy titles published in 2020*, as researched by users of Oxford Scholarship Online.

Explore our collection and enjoy free access to the chapters below until 31st March, 2021.

*Most viewed titles published in 2020, between January - September 2020.

Ancient Philosophy

Aesthetics & Philosophy of Art

Epistemology

Metaphysics

Philosophy of Mind

Philosophy of Religion

Read free chapter

Book Description

Philosophy of Science

Read free chapter

Book Description

Moral Philosophy & Ethics

Social & Political Philosophy

Discover more titles from OUP Philosophy

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Privacy Policy | Legal Notice | Cookie Policy

Continue

We use cookies to enhance your experience on our website. This website uses cookies that provide targeted advertising and which track your use of this website. By clicking ‘Continue’ or by continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time.

Learn More

Attentional Engines explores the potential of the growing field of cognitive sciences and aesthetics. Along the way it introduces readers to the philosophy of art and evaluates what psychology and neuroscience can and cannot tell us about the nature and value of artworks.

This volume presents a new theory of games which insists on games' unique value in human life. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part of how we become mature, free people. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games.

Gregory Currie defends the view that works of fiction guide the imagination, and then considers whether fiction can also guide our beliefs. He makes a case for modesty about learning from fiction, as it is easy to be too optimistic about the psychological insights of authors, and empathy is hard to acquire while not always morally advantageous.

Ursula Coope presents a ground-breaking study of the philosophy of the Neoplatonists (3rd-5th century CE). She explores their understanding of freedom and responsibility: an entity is free to the extent that it is wholly in control of itself, self-determining, self-constituting, and self-knowing - which only a non-bodily thing can be.

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is a volume of original articles on all aspects of ancient philosophy. This free chapter studies ancient Cynicism as a philosophical ‘way of life’.

This volume collects some of the most up-to-date work on philosophical fictionalism-the idea that a notion of pretense or fiction can help resolve certain puzzles or problems in philosophy.

This book looks at the role of the imagination in science, from both philosophical and psychological perspectives. Bringing together the work of leading researchers in philosophy and psychology, the book provides a comprehensive and exciting picture of this under-explored subject.

How do thought and language manage to be 'about' aspects of the world? J. Robert G. Williams investigates how representation arises out of a fundamentally non-representational world, showing the explanatory relations between the representational properties of language, of thought, and of perception and intention.

Alison Laywine presents a new interpretation of one of the most famous texts in modern philosophy: Kant's Transcendental Deduction in his Critique of Pure Reason. She shows how Kant developed his view of a world as a whole unified by universal laws, and his view of experience as the whole of all possible appearances unified by universal laws.

Time travel is metaphysically possible. Nikk Effingham contends that arguments for the impossibility of time travel are not sound. Focusing mainly on the Grandfather Paradox, Effingham explores the ramifications of taking this view, discusses issues in probability and decision theory, and considers the potential dangers of travelling in time.

Moriarty presents the deepest and broadest study for many years of Blaise Pascal's philosophy and theology, as represented in his Pensées, a seminal work in the development of modern thought.

How did science come to have such a central place in Western culture? How did our ways of thinking, and our moral, political, and social values, come to be modelled around scientific values? Stephen Gaukroger traces the story of how these values developed, and how they influenced society and culture from the 19th to the mid-20th century.

John Rawls is widely considered one of the most important political philosophers of the 20th century. This collection of original essays explores ten major areas of philosophical debate inspired by his work.

This book details the development of moralized, philosophical arguments defending capitalism from the late eighteenth century to today.

How should we understand the political morality of migration? Are travel bans, walls, or carrier sanctions ever morally permissible in a just society? This book offers a new approach to these and related questions.

This book provides a new interpretation of Hegel's philosophy, arguing that his theory of reason and thinking revolve around the concept of organic life.

Why does talk about politics and moral issues tend to get so ugly, heated, and personal? Too often, especially online, people engage in moral grandstanding—they use moral talk to impress others by showing them they have the right views. Tosi and Warmke show why people behave this way, why it's wrong, and what we can do about it.

In this book Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen address the complexities of his question "Is affirmative action morally (un)justifiable?" by analyzing the prevailing contemporary arguments both for and against affirmative action.

Mining new research in neuroscience; social, cognitive, and developmental psychology; decision theory; and philosophy, the essays in this volume offer a multi-dimensional, robust examination of self-control.

Andrew Youpa offers an original reading of Spinoza's moral philosophy, arguing it is fundamentally an ethics of joy. Unlike approaches to moral philosophy that center on praiseworthiness or blameworthiness, Youpa maintains that Spinoza's moral philosophy is about how to live lovingly and joyously.