New Books in Philosophy

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Society & Culture Philosophy

What's New Books in Philosophy about?

Interview with Philosophers about their New Books

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New Books in Philosophy episodes:

04.20.2024
Emily S. Lee, "A Phenomenology for Women of Color: Merleau-Ponty and Identity-In-Difference" (Lexington Books, 2024)
How can we understand the changing power of race and gender to shape our reality? How shared is reality? Can narratives of experience help us develop these analyses? What role does embodiment play in shaping experience? In A Phenomenology for Women...
04.10.2024
Eric Schwitzgebel, "The Weirdness of the World" (Princeton UP, 2024)
"What's life for if there's no time to play and explore?" In The Weirdness of the World (Princeton UP, 2024), Eric Schwitzgebel invites the reader to a walk on the wilder side of philosophical speculation about the cosmos and consciousness. Is consciousness...
03.20.2024
Stephen Phillips, "The Metaphysics of Meditation: Sri Aurobindo and Adi-Sakara on the Isa Upanisad" (Bloombury, 2024)
In The Metaphysics of Meditation: Sri Aurobindo and Ādi Śaṅkara on the Īśā Upaniṣad (Bloomsbury 2024), Stephen Phillips argues that the two titular Vedānta philosophers are not as opposed as commonly thought. His book is structured as a series of essays on...
03.10.2024
Jon Robson, "Aesthetic Testimony: An Optimistic Approach" (Oxford UP, 2022)
A lot of what we claim to know we learn from other people's testimony: they tell us, and in many ordinary contexts that is enough to gain knowledge. But for many philosophers, aesthetics is different. Such pessimists about aesthetic testimony...
03.05.2024
Charlotte Witt, "Social Goodness: The Ontology of Social Norms" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In our day-to-day lives, we are subject to normative requirements, obligations, and expectations that originate in the social roles we occupy. For example, professors ought to pursue the truth, while parents ought to be supportive of their children. What’s interesting is that these role-specific...
02.20.2024
Rebecca Roache, "For F*ck's Sake: Why Swearing Is Shocking, Rude, and Fun" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Swearing can be a powerful communicative act, for good or ill. The same word can incite violence or increase intimacy. How is swearing so multivalent in its power? Is it just all those harsh “c” and “k” sounds? Does swearing...
02.10.2024
Michael Devitt, "Biological Essentialism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
What makes a species a species? Aristotle answered the species question by positing unchanging essences, properties that all and only members of a species shared. Individuals belonged to a species by possessing this essence. Biologists and philosophers of biology today...
02.01.2024
Lisa Herzog, "Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
For better or worse, democracy and epistemology are intertwined. For one thing, politics is partly a matter of gathering, assessing, and applying information. And this can be done responsibly or incompetently. At least since Plato, a leading critique of democracy has...
01.20.2024
Jan Westerhoff, "Candrakirti's Introduction to the Middle Way: A Guide" (Oxford UP, 2023)
A proponent of the Madhyamaka tradition of Mahāyāna Buddhism, Candrakīrti wrote several works, one of which, the Madhamakāvatāra, strongly influenced later Tibetan understandings of Madhyamaka. This work is the subject of Jan Westerhoff’s Candrakīrti’s Introduction to the Middle Way: A Guide (Oxford University Press, 2024),...
01.10.2024
Krista K. Thomason, "Dancing with the Devil: Why Bad Feelings Make Life Good" (Oxford UP, 2023)
How could a good life include one with anger, or jealousy, or spite? In Dancing with the Devil: Why Bad Feelings Make Life Good (Oxford UP, 2023), Krista Thomason flips the script on popular ways of dealing with our emotions, including neo-Stoicism,...
12.20.2023
Tyler Dalton McNabb and Erik Baldwin, "Classical Theism and Buddhism: Connecting Metaphysical and Ethical Systems" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
In addition to denying the existence of a substantial, enduring self, Buddhists are usually understood to deny the existence of a God or gods. However, in Classical Theism and Buddhism: Connecting Metaphysical and Ethical Systems (Bloomsbury, 2022), Tyler Dalton McNabb and Erik...
12.10.2023
Philip Goff, "Why? The Purpose of the Universe" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Does the universe have a purpose? If it does, how is this connected to the meaningfulness that we seek in our lives? In Why? The Purpose of the Universe (Oxford University Press, 2023), Philip Goff argues for cosmic purposivism, the idea that...
11.10.2023
Fabrizio Cariani, "The Modal Future: A Theory of Future-Directed Thought and Talk" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
What does “will” mean? A standard view is that it is a tensed mirror-image of “was”, and that the truth-conditions of past and future sentences – “He was late to the event”, “He will be late to the event” –...
11.01.2023
Melvin L. Rogers, "The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” is notoriously fiery. No doubt part of what’s gripping about it is its internal tension. Douglass begins by sincerely praising the founders and their philosophical principles, and...
10.20.2023
Chris Fraser, "Late Classical Chinese Thought" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Late Classical Chinese Thought (Oxford University Press, 2023) is Chris Fraser's topically organized study of the Warring States period of Chinese philosophy, the third century BCE. In addition to well-known texts like the Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and Mencius, Fraser's book introduces readers to Lu's Annals, the Guanzi, the Hanfeizi, the Shangjun...
10.01.2023
Emily McTernan, "On Taking Offence" (Oxford UP, 2023)
A lot of work in moral, political, and legal theory aims to define the offensive. Surprisingly, relatively little attention has been paid to the affectively intoned practice of taking offense. One consequence of this inattention is that discussion of offense-taking usually occurs...
09.20.2023
Matthew R. Dasti, "Vatsyayana's Commentary on the Nyaya-Sutra: A Guide" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In Vatsyayana's Commentary on the Nyaya-Sutra: A Guide (Oxford University Press, 2023), Matthew Dasti unpacks a canonical classical Indian text, the Nyayabhasya, while simultaneously demonstrating its relevance to contemporary philosophy. The commentary, the earliest extant on the Nyayasutra, ranges over topics in metaphysics, epistemology,...
09.12.2023
Adam Toon, "Mind As Metaphor: A Defence of Mental Fictionalism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Folk psychology (on a standard reading) is the way we attribute contentful mental states to others in order to explain and predict their behavior – for example, saying that John thinks the plant needs water as an inner mental state...
09.12.2023
A Better Way to Buy Books
Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the...
08.10.2023
Berislav Marusić, "On the Temporality of Emotions: An Essay on Grief, Anger, and Love" (Oxford UP, 2022)
When someone close to us dies, intense grief is an expected and reasonable response. But while the reason for our grief – the loss of the person who is the object of our grief – doesn’t change, our grief itself...
08.01.2023
Chrisoula Andreou, "Choosing Well: The Good, the Bad, and the Trivial" (Oxford UP, 2023)
It is common to think that rational agency involves acting in ways that, given one’s options, maximize the satisfaction of one’s preferences. This intuitive understanding has generated a wide-ranging literature about the ways in which individuals routinely fail to be...
07.10.2023
Torin Alter, "The Matter of Consciousness: From the Knowledge Argument to Russellian Monism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Frank Jackson’s "Knowledge Argument" introduced the philosophical world to Mary the brilliant neuroscientist, who knows everything there is to know about the physical world while living in a completely black and white environment. Yet she seems to learn something new...
07.01.2023
Kevin J. Elliott, "Democracy for Busy People" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
John Dewey and Jane Addams are both credited with the claim that the cure for democracy’s ills is more democracy. The sentiment is popular to this day among democratic theorists and practitioners. The thought is that a democratic deficit lies at the root...
06.20.2023
Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair, "Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
In his new contribution to the Bloomsbury Introductions to World Philosophies, Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World (Bloomsbury, 2022), Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair introduces readers to a tradition often ignored by contemporary philosophers. While simultaneously arguing for the fecundity of...
06.14.2023
Michael B. Gill, "A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art" (Princeton UP, 2022)
The third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) was a troubled soul – negative, misanthropic, and deeply troubled by his negativity and misanthropy. In A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art (Princeton University Press, 2022), Michael Gill shows how Shaftesbury’s efforts...
05.10.2023
Hasok Chang, "Realism for Realistic People: A New Pragmatist Philosophy of Science (Cambridge UP, 2022)
For a certain kind of standard realist, science aims at getting the absolute truth about the universe. For Hasok Chang, this view is unrealistic because we have no way of judging whether we are getting at that truth. In his...
05.01.2023
Darrel Moellendorf, "Mobilizing Hope: Climate Change and Global Poverty" (Oxford UP, 2022)
The news concerning climate change isn’t good. The warming of our planet now threatens to trap millions of people in extreme poverty while destabilizing the global order in ways that exacerbate existing global inequalities. Mitigation and adaptation strategies, even if...
04.20.2023
Eberhard Guhe, "An Indian Theory of Defeasible Reasoning: The Doctrine of Upādhi in the Upādhidarpaṇa" (Harvard UP, 2022)
An Indian Theory of Defeasible Reasoning: The Doctrine of upādhi in the Upādhidarpaṇa (Harvard University Press, 2022) is the first translation of this anonymous Navya-Nyāya treatise predating Gaṅgeśa. Eberhard Guhe’s book includes a translation as well as an introduction to the important idea of upādhi,...
04.10.2023
Tiger C. Roholt, "Distracted from Meaning: A Philosophy of Smartphones" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Social scientists have long studied the ways in which smartphone use can distract us from the proper performance of means-ends tasks, such as driving or medical procedures. In Distracted from Meaning: A Philosophy of Smartphones (Bloomsbury, 2022), Tiger Roholt discusses a distinct...
04.01.2023
Karen Frost-Arnold, "Who Should We Be Online?: A Social Epistemology for the Internet" (Oxford UP, 2023)
The Internet plays a central role in how we communicate, share information, disseminate ideas, maintain social connections, and conduct business. The Internet also exacerbates existing problems regarding irrationality, bias, wrongful discrimination, exploitation, and dehumanization. Moreover, the Internet gives rise to...
03.10.2023
Matthew Ratcliffe, "Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience" (MIT Press, 2022)
The grief we feel when someone close to us dies is characterized by a complex and profound experience of loss. But what is this experience? In Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience (MIT Press, 2022), Matthew Ratcliffe articulates a common structure...
03.01.2023
Thomas Kelly, "Bias: A Philosophical Study" (Oxford UP, 2023)
The concept of bias is familiar enough, partly because it is deployed frequently and in different contexts. For example, we talk about biased jurors, biased procedures, biased laws, biased decisions, and biased people. But we also talk about bias as a feature of certain frames of mind,...
02.20.2023
Monima Chadha, "Selfless Minds: A Contemporary Perspective on Vasubandhu's Metaphysics" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Buddhists are famous for their thesis that selves do not exist. But if they are right, what would that thesis mean for our apparent sense of self and for ordinary practices involving selves—or at least persons? In Selfless Minds: A Contemporary...
02.10.2023
Timothy Cleveland, "Beyond Words: Philosophy, Fiction, and the Unsayable" (Lexington Books, 2022)
It seems undeniable that language has limits in what it can express – among other philosophers, Wittgenstein famously drew a line of this sort in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. But what is the unsayable or inexpressible? What is interesting, philosophically, about the...
02.01.2023
Derrick Darby, "A Realistic Blacktopia: Why We Must Unite to Fight" (Oxford UP, 2022)
In the United States, unjust disparities in things like income, opportunity, health, safety, and education tightly track racial categorizations of the US population. An intuitive approach to social justice calls us to look to the sites of the greatest disadvantage,...
01.20.2023
Hil Malatino, "Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
Fatigue, disorientation, numbness, envy, rage, burnout. What good could come from thinking about trans experience and these bad feelings? In Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), Hil Malatino theorizes the centrality of bad feelings in...
01.12.2023
Oana Serban, "After Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions" (de Gruyter, 2022)
Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions revolutionized the way philosophers and historians of science thought about science, scientific progress, and the nature of scientific knowledge. But Kuhn himself also considered later on how his framework might apply to art. In After Thomas...
12.30.2022
Tommie Shelby, "The Idea of Prison Abolition" (Princeton UP, 2022)
By any reasonable metric, prisons as they exist in the United States and in many other countries are normatively unacceptable. What is the proper moral response to this? Can prisons and the practices surrounding incarceration feasibly be reformed, or should...
12.10.2022
Nancy J. Nersessian, "Interdisciplinarity in the Making: Models and Methods in Frontier Science" (MIT Press, 2022)
Based on examining physics and the practices of physicists, philosophers of science often see models in science as representational intermediaries between scientific theories and the world. But what do scientists do when they don’t yet have the models or the...
12.01.2022
Alexander Kirshner, "Legitimate Opposition" (Yale UP, 2022)
The idea of legitimate political opposition is familiar. A decent political order permits citizens, parties, and coalitions to challenge those in power. Under such conditions, there is an ongoing nonviolent contest for power. Typically, the value of legitimate opposition is...
11.21.2022
Charles Goodman, "The Tattvasaṃgraha Of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Metaphysical Chapters" (Oxford UP, 2022)
The Tattvasaṃgraha of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Metaphysical Chapters (Oxford University Press, 2022) collects excerpts from a massive encyclopedic work of the late period of Buddhism in India. Translator Charles Goodman has selected sections of this Sanskrit text which cover debates over the...
11.10.2022
Tristan Grøtvedt Haze, "Meaning and Metaphysical Necessity" (Routledge, 2022)
In 1980, the philosopher and logician Saul Kripke published a small but hugely influential book, Naming and Necessity, in which he argued that some claims that we discover empirically to be true are also necessarily true – true not just...
11.01.2022
Saba Bazargan-Forward, "Authority, Cooperation, and Accountability" (Oxford UP, 2022)
We often find ourselves acting in concert with others, where what we do together goes beyond the causal contribution of any single participant. When a collection of individuals works together in a way that results in a wrongful harm, it’s intuitive to...
10.20.2022
Leah Kalmanson, "Cross-Cultural Existentialism: On the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Does human existence have a meaning? If so, is that meaning found in the world outside of us, or is it something we bring to our experience? In Cross-Cultural Existentialism: On the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought (Bloomsbury, 2020)...
10.10.2022
Neil Levy, "Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Misinformation, disinformation, fake news, alternative facts: we are awash in a vast sea of epistemically questionable, not to mention false, testimony. How can we discern what is epistemically good to believe from what is not? Why are so many of...
10.03.2022
Michele Moody-Adams, "Making Space for Justice: Social Movements, Collective Imagination, and Political Hope" (Columbia UP, 2022)
A standard way of proceeding in political philosophy is to start with some form of conceptual inquiry: we first try to figure out what justice, equality, and freedom are and only then we may eventually begin thinking about how these goods might...
09.20.2022
Kim Q. Hall, "Queering Philosophy" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
Why isn’t there a queer subfield in philosophy? How has institutionalized philosophy continued to develop without a recognized specialization in queer philosophy? What would it mean to care queerly for philosophy? And how might that change not only the field,...
09.01.2022
Kelly McCormick, "The Problem of Blame: Making Sense of Moral Anger" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Blame seems both morally necessary and morally dicey. Necessary, because it appears to be a central part of holding others to account for wrongdoing. Dicey, because – in its standard forms – blame involves the expression of anger and aims...
08.19.2022
Pascah Mungwini, "African Philosophy: Emancipation and Practice" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
In African Philosophy: Emancipation and Practice (Bloomsbury, 2022), Pascah Mungwini considers the history of African philosophy in relationship to world philosophies. Arguing for the importance of African philosophy to know itself through its past and its present, Mungwini takes up topics such...
08.10.2022
Igor Douven, "The Art of Abduction" (MIT Press, 2022)
How should we form new beliefs? In particular, what inferential strategies are epistemically justified for forming new beliefs? Nowadays the dominant theory is Bayesianism, whereby we ought to reason in accordance with Bayes’s rule based in the axioms of probability...

What's New Books in Philosophy about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

New Books in Philosophy episodes:

Emily S. Lee, "A Phenomenology for Women of Color: Merleau-Ponty and Identity-In-Difference" (Lexington Books, 2024)

Eric Schwitzgebel, "The Weirdness of the World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Stephen Phillips, "The Metaphysics of Meditation: Sri Aurobindo and Adi-Sakara on the Isa Upanisad" (Bloombury, 2024)

Jon Robson, "Aesthetic Testimony: An Optimistic Approach" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Charlotte Witt, "Social Goodness: The Ontology of Social Norms" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Rebecca Roache, "For F*ck's Sake: Why Swearing Is Shocking, Rude, and Fun" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Michael Devitt, "Biological Essentialism" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Lisa Herzog, "Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Jan Westerhoff, "Candrakirti's Introduction to the Middle Way: A Guide" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Krista K. Thomason, "Dancing with the Devil: Why Bad Feelings Make Life Good" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Tyler Dalton McNabb and Erik Baldwin, "Classical Theism and Buddhism: Connecting Metaphysical and Ethical Systems" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

Philip Goff, "Why? The Purpose of the Universe" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Fabrizio Cariani, "The Modal Future: A Theory of Future-Directed Thought and Talk" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

Melvin L. Rogers, "The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2023)

Chris Fraser, "Late Classical Chinese Thought" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Emily McTernan, "On Taking Offence" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Matthew R. Dasti, "Vatsyayana's Commentary on the Nyaya-Sutra: A Guide" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Adam Toon, "Mind As Metaphor: A Defence of Mental Fictionalism" (Oxford UP, 2023)

A Better Way to Buy Books

Berislav Marusić, "On the Temporality of Emotions: An Essay on Grief, Anger, and Love" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Chrisoula Andreou, "Choosing Well: The Good, the Bad, and the Trivial" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Torin Alter, "The Matter of Consciousness: From the Knowledge Argument to Russellian Monism" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Kevin J. Elliott, "Democracy for Busy People" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair, "Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

Michael B. Gill, "A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art" (Princeton UP, 2022)

Hasok Chang, "Realism for Realistic People: A New Pragmatist Philosophy of Science (Cambridge UP, 2022)

Darrel Moellendorf, "Mobilizing Hope: Climate Change and Global Poverty" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Eberhard Guhe, "An Indian Theory of Defeasible Reasoning: The Doctrine of Upādhi in the Upādhidarpaṇa" (Harvard UP, 2022)

Tiger C. Roholt, "Distracted from Meaning: A Philosophy of Smartphones" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

Karen Frost-Arnold, "Who Should We Be Online?: A Social Epistemology for the Internet" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Matthew Ratcliffe, "Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience" (MIT Press, 2022)

Thomas Kelly, "Bias: A Philosophical Study" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Monima Chadha, "Selfless Minds: A Contemporary Perspective on Vasubandhu's Metaphysics" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Timothy Cleveland, "Beyond Words: Philosophy, Fiction, and the Unsayable" (Lexington Books, 2022)

Derrick Darby, "A Realistic Blacktopia: Why We Must Unite to Fight" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Hil Malatino, "Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

Oana Serban, "After Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions" (de Gruyter, 2022)

Tommie Shelby, "The Idea of Prison Abolition" (Princeton UP, 2022)

Nancy J. Nersessian, "Interdisciplinarity in the Making: Models and Methods in Frontier Science" (MIT Press, 2022)

Alexander Kirshner, "Legitimate Opposition" (Yale UP, 2022)

Charles Goodman, "The Tattvasaṃgraha Of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Metaphysical Chapters" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Tristan Grøtvedt Haze, "Meaning and Metaphysical Necessity" (Routledge, 2022)

Saba Bazargan-Forward, "Authority, Cooperation, and Accountability" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Leah Kalmanson, "Cross-Cultural Existentialism: On the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

Neil Levy, "Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People" (Oxford UP, 2021)

Michele Moody-Adams, "Making Space for Justice: Social Movements, Collective Imagination, and Political Hope" (Columbia UP, 2022)

Kim Q. Hall, "Queering Philosophy" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)

Kelly McCormick, "The Problem of Blame: Making Sense of Moral Anger" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

Pascah Mungwini, "African Philosophy: Emancipation and Practice" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

Igor Douven, "The Art of Abduction" (MIT Press, 2022)