This book touches on most of the important questions that arise in life. Somewhat in the manner of Nietzsche, it presents provocative perspectives on topics ranging from morality to politics, from art to religion, from capitalism to socialism. What is the "meaning of life"? What does it mean to act morally? What are the sources of modern unhappiness and social ills? How has Western society evolved to its present state, and what is its future? What is the future of capitalism itself? Such questions, and many others, are addressed. The book is also intended as literature, though, and as such contains poetry, fiction, and even satire. Ultimately its purpose is simply stated: it is meant to contribute to the collective project of dragging "humanism" out from the underground.

This book argues that existentialism’s concern with human existence does not simply make it another form of humanism. Influenced by Heidegger’s 1947 ‘Letter on Humanism’, structuralist and post-structuralist critics have both argued that existentialism is synonymous with a naïve ‘humanist’ idea of the subject. Such identification has led to the movement’s dismissal as a credible philosophy; this book aims to challenge such a view. Through a lucid and thought-provoking exploration of the concept of perversity in Sartre and Nietzsche, Mitchell argues that understanding the human as a ‘perversion’ of something other than itself allows us to have a philosophy of the human without the humanist subject. In short, through perversion, we can talk about the human as not merely having a relation to the world, but of being that relation. With an explicit defence of Sartre against the charge of humanism, accompanied by a novel and distinctive reinterpretation of Nietzsche, Mitchell recovers an existentialism that is at once both radical and philosophically relevant.

Life does not become empty and meaningless in a godless universe. This is the contention at the heart of humanism, the philosophy concerned with making sense of the world through reason, experience and shared human values. In this thought-provoking introduction, Peter Cave explores the humanist approach to religious belief, ethics and politics, and addresses key criticisms. Revised and updated to confront today’s great crises – the climate emergency and global pandemics – and the future of humanism in the face of rapid technological advancement, this is for anyone wishing to better understand what it means to be human in the twenty-first century.

In this book, Varela revisits the problem of structure versus agency. Based on his original insight into Kant's role in the debate, the author is able to solve this centuries old dilemma for the first time. He goes on to explain the wider ramifications of his discovery, addressing Giddens Call, the stalemate of the social and psychological sciences, determinism in science and postmodernism.

"There's a time when the operation of the Machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part." So said Mario Savio in 1964; so say millions of the disenfranchised now. As the apparatus of elite institutions grinds on, pushing society to the brink, protesters across the world are putting their bodies upon its gears and its wheels, to open up space for freedom and creativity unconstrained by institutional strictures. It's time we all followed their lead. In a series of freewheeling reflections and summaries of historical scholarship, this book reinterprets history and culture along anarchist lines. From a rationalistic and Marxian point of view it illuminates capitalism, economics, U.S. history, popular culture, gender relations, and human psychology, even the nature of the fascinating concepts "genius" and "greatness." Its agenda is that of the seventeenth-century Levellers: deflate the pomposities of elite authority, and bring the world down to the level of democratic reason. In the process, one hopes, we will find our way out of the crisis of the present and into a more just civilization in the future.