A Cynic Looks at Life is an essay written by Ambrose Bierce. Misanthropes, grumps, and the hopelessly jaded will relish every ruthlessly witty word of Ambrose Bierce's essay collection A Cynic Looks at Life. Bierce unleashes his jaundiced eye and incisive insight on a number of topics that are still as resonant as they were at the time of the book's 1912 publication. Ambrose Bierce (June 24, 1842 – 1914) was an American Civil War soldier, wit, and writer. Bierce's book The Devil's Dictionary was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has been described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature"; and his book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (also published as In the Midst of Life) was named by the Grolier Club as one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900. A prolific and versatile writer, Bierce was regarded as one of the most influential journalists in the United States. For his horror writing, Michael Dirda ranked him alongside Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft." as a pioneering writer of realist fiction. His war stories influenced Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, and others, and he was considered an influential and feared literary critic. In recent decades Bierce has gained wider respect as a fabulist and for his poetry. In December 1913, Bierce traveled to Chihuahua, Mexico, to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He disappeared, and was rumored to be traveling with rebel troops. He was never seen again.

La pandemia es un fenómeno configurado por la biología viral e inmunitaria, la racionalidad de las respuestas y los mitos subyacentes a la mismas en colusión con las desigualdades existentes. Ante ella el homo absconditus, el humano escondido, aparentemente del virus, pero en conflicto con su propia naturaleza biológica y físico química, negocia mágicamente con la enfermedad y la muerte entregar o sacrificar a los "anormales" y excluidos por déficits organizacionales sistémicos. Pero cuanto más tratamos de escondernos, más a la intemperie nos sentimos y nuestra sensibilidad se halla a flor de piel. Se trata de criticar la razón abstracta, interrumpir los mitos y reencontrar las singularidades que escapan a nuestras normas éticas y morales y las dinamizan hacia una justicia interminable.

El mundo digital nos expone cotidianamente a imágenes de la realidad de la guerra, haciendo más difícil su idealización. Sin embargo, la singularidad sensual y material de esas imágenes se soslaya para permitir que la racionalidad abstracta ocupe el primer plano, explicando y justificando la guerra en términos geopolíticos, sociológicos, económicos, culturales, e ignorando la contracara obscena de esa racionalidad, encarnada en mitos sacrificiales ocultos aunque efectivos en la acción. Con la pandemia aprendimos a tolerar la enfermedad y la muerte masivas mientras que los mitos sacrificiales, que ya estaban en juego, contenían una guerra implícita que, sumada a otras violencias, facilitaron deslizarnos a guerras más abiertas. Éstas potencian aún más el pensamiento mágico de quienes tratan de rediseñar el mundo ofreciendo víctimas propiciatorias para realizar así sus sueños históricos.

Though it has now fallen out of favor among many practitioners and scholars, Freud's concept of psychoanalysis -- an approach that focuses primarily on adverse events in early childhood and irrational drives that are overcome via extended talk therapy -- was and continues to be enormously influential, not only in the realm of psychology, but also in the larger culture. This volume offers a comprehensive overview of psychoanalysis from the point of view of the field's creator. Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902. Freud lived and worked in Vienna, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938 Freud left Austria to escape the Nazis. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939. In creating psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the underlying mechanisms of repression. On this basis Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, ego and super-ego.

A Guide to Stoicism, which is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection", would not suffer such emotions. St. George Stock was the son of St George Henry Stock senior of Castle Connell, County Sligo and Frances Wilhelmina Atkinson of Rehins Parish, Ballynahaghish, County Mayo, who were married at St Peter's Church, Dublin on 17 December 1844. He was the fourth of six children. In 1868 St George junior went up to the University of Oxford from Victoria College, Jersey, and was matriculated from Pembroke College on 26 October 1868. His granddaughter Heather Grace Angel was a Hollywood actress.

Rodó hoy es recordado principalmente por ser el autor de Ariel, ensayo filosófico que marcó la transición entre los siglos XIX y XX con su llamado a formar una élite latinoamericana de espiritualidad "elevada", que se inspirara en la caridad y los ideales grecolatinos en lugar de hacerlo en el utilitarismo. Menos se tiene en cuenta que Ariel integraba un ciclo más amplio ─La vida nueva– y que su propuesta modernista se desarrolló luego en otros títulos, como Liberalismo y jacobinismo y Motivos de Proteo. Esos libros y algunos más se incluyen en estas Obras completas junto con sus poesías y su correspondencia personal.-

A Message to Garcia is a widely distributed essay written by Elbert Hubbard in 1899. Hubbard was inspired by a daring escapade performed by an American soldier, 1st Lt. Andrew S. Rowan, just prior to the Spanish–American War. According to Hubbard, Rowan carried a message from President William McKinley to "Gen. Calixto García, a leader of the Cuban insurgents somewhere in the mountain fastness of Cuba—no one knew where." Hubbard compared Rowan's heroic effort to "the imbecility of the average man—the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it."

A Modern Utopia is a novel by H. G. Wells. Because of the complexity and sophistication of its narrative structure A Modern Utopia has been called "not so much a modern as a postmodern utopia." The novel is best known for its notion that a voluntary order of nobility known as the Samurai could effectively rule a "kinetic and not static" world state so as to solve "the problem of combining progress with political stability." To this planet "out beyond Sirius" the Owner of the Voice and the botanist are translated, imaginatively, "in the twinkling of an eye . . . We should scarcely note the change. Not a cloud would have gone from the sky." Their point of entry is on the slopes of the Piz Lucendro in the Swiss Alps. The adventures of these two characters are traced through eleven chapters. Little by little they discover how Utopia is organized. It is a world with "no positive compulsions at all . . . for the adult Utopian—unless they fall upon him as penalties incurred." The Owner of the Voice and the botanist are soon required to account for their presence. When their thumbprints are checked against records in "the central index housed in a vast series of buildings at or near Paris," both discover they have doubles in Utopia. They journey to London to meet them, and the Owner of the Voice's double is a member of the Samurai, a voluntary order of nobility that rules Utopia. "These samurai form the real body of the State." Running through the novel as a foil to the main narrative is the botanist's obsession with an unhappy love affair back on Earth. The Owner of the Voice is annoyed at this undignified and unworthy insertion of earthly affairs in Utopia, but when the botanist meets the double of his beloved in Utopia the violence of his reaction bursts the imaginative bubble that has sustained the narrative and the two men find themselves back in early-twentieth-century London.

Underneath and beyond the method, you have caught the intention and the spirit...Your study could not be more conscientious or true to the original." - Henri Bergson The famous French philosopher Henri Bergson had but the highest praise for Edouard le Roy's presentation of Bergson's philosophy for the general public in a couple of articles that would form the core of this book, A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson: Henri Bergson. Le Roy hoped that this volume would serve as an introduction, which would make it easier to read and understand Bergson's works, and serve as a primer to his "new philosophy." Bergson's new philosophy essentially argued that the intuition is deeper than the intellect. His work was considered the main challenge to the mechanistic view of nature. A great opponent of Cartesian dualism, he resisted the reduction of psychological phenomena to physical states. Bergson, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, is sometimes said to have anticipated features of relativity theory and the modern scientific theories of the mind. EDOUARD LE ROY (1870-1954) was the French philosopher Henri Bergson's most famous pupil. From 1914 until 1921 he functioned as Bergson's "permanent substitute" in the Chair of Modern Philosophy at the College de France while the philosopher served on French diplomatic missions.

Here is a thinker whose name is today on everybody's lips, who is deemed by acknowledged philosophers worthy of comparison with the greatest, and who, with his pen as well as his brain, has overleapt all technical obstacles, and won himself a reading both outside and inside the schools. Beyond any doubt, and by common consent, Mr Henri Bergson's work will appear to future eyes among the most characteristic, fertile, and glorious of our era. It marks a never-to-be-forgotten date in history; it opens up a phase of metaphysical thought; it lays down a principle of development the limits of which are indeterminable; and it is after cool consideration, with full consciousness of the exact value of words, that we are able to pronounce the revolution which it effects equal in importance to that effected by Kant, or even by Socrates.

Craving an intellectually stimulating read? Dive into A Pluralistic Universe by William James, an influential thinker and psychologist who also happened to be the brother of acclaimed novelist Henry James. This lucid, gripping account outlines some of James' critiques of standard methods of reasoning. It's definitely challenging, but much more appealing to a general audience than most philosophical tracts. William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the United States has ever produced, while others have labeled him the "Father of American psychology". Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, James is considered to be one of the major figures associated with the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology. A Review of General Psychology analysis, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. He also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James' work has influenced intellectuals such as Emile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, and has even influenced Presidents, such as Jimmy Carter.

Ethical philosophy has a long and distinguished history, but how can you apply it to your life? This Practical Guide explores the alternative ethical philosophies and how we can all use these to aid us with everyday dilemmas. Introducing Ethics for Everyday Life provides advice on whether human beings really are selfish and greedy, why you might want to be a good person, and how to pick an ethical philosophy that works for you. Free of jargon but full of straightforward advice, case studies and step-by-step instructions, this is the perfect concise introduction to using ethics to help you make decisions.

How can we apply philosophy to our everyday lives? Can philosophy affect the way we live? This book will show how philosophy can help to improve your thinking about everyday life. And how, by improving the quality of your thinking, you can improve the quality of your life. It will make you more aware of what you think and why, and how knowing this can help you can change the way you think about your life. Full of practical examples and straightforward advice, and written by an expert in the field, this guide can help you become calmer and happier, and make better decisions.

G.K. Chesterton was a prolific writer on many topics. His views of history were always from the standpoint of men and their interactions, and it may fairly be said he saw all of history as a battle between civilization and barbarism. So it has always been, and that remains true even today. "But it is especially in the matter of the Middle Ages that the popular histories trample upon the popular traditions. In this respect there is an almost comic contrast between the general information provided about England in the last two or three centuries, in which its present industrial system was being built up, and the general information given about the preceding centuries, which we call broadly medieval." As this quotation taken from the Introduction clearly shows, he is no mere pedant reciting dry dates and locations, but a profound thinker flooding new light onto those modern "myths" that have filled our histories.

A Tear and a Smile contains 56 parables, stories, and poems in Gibran's wholly inimitable manner...truly a masterful approach to discovering the meaning of one's life; Kahlil Gibran was one of the most important philosophers to emerge into the world.

Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity.

"A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge" is one of Berkeley's best known works and in it Berkeley expounds upon this idea of subjective idealism, which in other words is the idea that all of reality, as far as humans are concerned, is simply a construct of the way our brains perceive and according to Berkeley no other sense of reality matters beyond that which we perceive.

Nothing is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to discover anything new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all those, which have been advanced before them. And indeed were they content with lamenting that ignorance, which we still lie under in the most important questions, that can come before the tribunal of human reason, there are few, who have an acquaintance with the sciences, that would not readily agree with them. It is easy for one of judgment and learning, to perceive the weak foundation even of those systems, which have obtained the greatest credit, and have carried their pretensions highest to accurate and profound reasoning. Principles taken upon trust, consequences lamely deduced from them, want of coherence in the parts, and of evidence in the whole, these are every where to be met with in the systems of the most eminent philosophers, and seem to have drawn disgrace upon philosophy itself...

A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume is considered by many to be his most important work and one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. The Treatise is a classic statement of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. In the introduction Hume presents the idea of placing all science and philosophy on a novel foundation: namely, an empirical investigation into human nature. Contemporary philosophers have written of Hume that "no man has influenced the history of philosophy to a deeper or more disturbing degree" and that Hume's Treatise is "the founding document of cognitive science" and the "most important philosophical work written in English." Contents: Of the Understanding Of Ideas, Their Origin, Composition, Connexion, Abstraction, Etc. Of the Ideas of Space and Time. Of Knowledge and Probability. Of the Sceptical and Other Systems of Philosophy. Of the Passions Of Pride and Humility Of Love and Hatred Of the Will and Direct Passions Of Morals Of Virtue and Vice in General Of Justice and Injustice Of the Other Virtues and Vices