Philosophy

PLEASE NOTE: ALL CITATIONS ARE IN MLA 7 FORMAT. THE PREFERRED FORMAT IS MLA 8.  SEE OWL PURDUE FOR PROPER CITATIONS.

Books

Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

 Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1994.

Moving away from the Marxist/Freudian approaches that had concerned him earlier, Baudrillard developed in this book a theory of contemporary culture that relies on displacing economic notions of cultural production with notions of cultural expenditure. -Amazon

Bhagavad Gita. Commentary by Swami Mukundananda. 2014. http://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/. Accessed 25 August 2016. 

In this authoritative commentary, Swami Mukundananda reveals the original meanings of the verses with crystal clear explanations and perfect logic. Adopting a comprehensive and holistic approach not attempted hitherto, he intersperses his purports with illustrative stories and real-life examples to make the teachings easy to comprehend and implement in everyday living -Amazon

 

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 50th ed. New York : W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of “the problem that has no name”: the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women’s confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives.

Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Affluent Society. 40th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Warning against individual and societal complacence about economic inequity, he offers an economic model for investing in public wealth that challenges “conventional wisdom” (a phrase he coined that has since entered our vernacular) about the long-term value of a production-based economy and the true nature of poverty…is as relevant today on the question of wealth in America as it was in 1958 -Amazon

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: Harper, 1962.

“What is the meaning of being?” This is the central question of Martin Heidegger’s profoundly important work, in which the great philosopher seeks to explain the basic problems of existence. A central influence on later philosophy, literature, art, and criticism—as well as existentialism and much of postmodern thought—Being and Time forever changed the intellectual map of the modern world. -Amazon

Kant, Immanuel. The Philosophy of Kant Immanuel: Kant’s Moral and Political Writings. Edited by Carl J. Friedrich. New York: Modern Library, 1949.

Kierkegaard, Soren. A Kierkegaard Anthology. Edited by Robert Bretall. New York: Modern Library, 1959.

This is emphatically not a collection of “snippets,” but the cream of Kierkegaard, each selection interesting and intelligible in itself, and all ranking among his most important work. They are so arranged as to convey an idea of his remarkable intellectual development. -Amazon

Legge, James. I Ching: The Book of Changes. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1964.

The classic book of Chinese Wisdom, interpreting the 64 Hexagrams of the I-Ching. The I-Ching is the oldest form of divination, and this is the classic translation from the original Chinese texts, by James Legge. -Amazon

Nietzsche, Friedrich.  On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.

On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life is shown to be a ‘timely’ work, too, insofar as it weaves together a number of Nietzsche’s most important influences and thematic directions at that time: ancient culture, science, epistemology, and the thought of Schopenhauer and Burckhardt. -Amazon

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufman & R.J. Hollingdale, New York, Vintage Books 1967.  

Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that the purpose of On the Genealogy of Morals was to call attention to his previous writings. But in fact the book does much more than that, elucidating and expanding on the cryptic aphorisms of Beyond Good and Evil, and presenting a coherent discussion of morality in a work that is more accessible than much of his previous writings -Amazon

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spake Zarathrustra. New York, Modern Library, N.d.

Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work…his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life force: passionate, chaotic and free. -Amazon

Padmasambhava. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. 1st American Ed. Translated by Gyurme Dorje. New York: Viking, 2006. 

…this complete edition faithfully presents the insights and intentions of the original work. It includes one of the most detailed and compelling descriptions of the after-death state in world literature, exquisitely written practices that can transform our experience of daily life, guidance on helping those who are dying, and an inspirational perspective on coping with bereavement. -Amazon

Plato. Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1997.

Outstanding translations by leading contemporary scholars–many commissioned especially for this volume–are presented here in the first single edition to include the entire surviving corpus of works attributed to Plato in antiquity. -Amazon

Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York : Plume, 1999.

…it contains Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism in any of her works of fiction. The book depicts a dystopian United States, wherein many of society’s most prominent and successful industrialists abandon their fortunes and the nation itself, in response to aggressive new regulations, whereupon most vital industries collapse. -Amazon

Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. Centennial ed. New York : Signet/New American Library, [1970?], 1964.

Ayn Rand here sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, the philosophy that holds human life—the life proper to a rational being—as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with man’s nature, with the creative requirements of his survival, and with a free society. -Amazon

Sartre, Jean Paul. The Philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre. Edited by Robert Denoon Cumming. New York: Modern Library, 1966.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 1980) was a significant voice in the creation of existential thought. His explorations of the ways human existence is unique among all life-forms in its capacity to choose continue to influence fields such as Marxist philosophy, sociology, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, but refused the honor. -Amazon

 

Articles

Maloyed, Christie L. “Mad Men and the Virtue of Selfishness.” Journal Of Popular Film & Television 42.1 (2014): 16-24. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Aug. 2016.

Ong, Yi-Ping. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Mad Men and Moral Ambiguity.” MLN 127.5 (2012): 1013-39. ProQuest. Web. 8 Aug. 2016.