The Realm of Reason is a manifesto for a new rationalism in philosophy. Christopher Peacocke develops an original theory of what makes a thinker entitled to form a given belief. The theory is articulated in three principles of rationalism, which together imply that all entitlement has an element that is independent of experience. Peacocke elaborates this rationalism in detail for the classical issues of perceptual knowledge, induction, and the status of moral thought. Hisnew generalized approach to epistemology has applications throughout philosophy, and it will interest all concerned with knowledge, truth, and rationality.

Jenny George’s debut showcases an astonishing poetic talent, a new voice that is intensely focused, patient, and empathic. The Dream of Reason explores the paradoxical relationships between humans and the animals we imagine, keep, fear, and consume. Titled after Goya’s grotesque bestiary, George’s own dreamscape is populated by purring moths, bats that crawl like goblins, and livestock—especially pigs, whose spirit and slaughter inform a central series of portraits. The poems invite moments of stark realism into a spacious, lucid realm just outside of time—finding revelation in stillness, intimacy in violence, and vision in language that lifts from the dark. From “Threshold Gods”: I saw a bat in a dream and then later that week I saw a real bat, crawling on its elbows across the porch like a goblin. It was early evening. I want to ask about death. But first I want to ask about flying. Jenny George lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she runs a foundation for Buddhist-based social justice. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Thomson provides a systematic theory of human and social rights, elucidating what in general makes an attribution of a right true. This is a major effort to provide a stable foundation for the deeply held belief that we are not mere cogs in a communal machine, but are instead individuals whose private interests are entitled to respect.

The astonishing success of the natural sciences in the modern era has led many thinkers to assume that similar feats of knowledge and power should be achievable in human affairs. That assumption, and the accompanying notion that the methods of modern science ought to be applied to social and political questions, have been at the heart of a number of prominent philosophical schools in the modern age, and much of the politics of the past century. Is the application of scientific logic to the study of human affairs philosophically defensible? Does it aid or hinder our efforts at a genuine understanding of the human world? Why have so many modern ideologies, including those responsible for some of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century, advanced themselves under the banner of science? Why, in other words, do we assume that modern science holds the key to an understanding of human affairs? Are we right to make this assumption? And what does the assumption mean for contemporary society and politics? Tyranny of Reason, which is designed for the interested lay reader and for undergraduate or beginning graduate students in the social sciences, attempts to answer these important questions in the context of the history of philosophy

Knowledge of facts is essential for the management of life. Most studies of the subject examine how we go about trying to obtain it; they describe the processes and proceedings of rational inquiry. The present work steps back from this to inquire into the limits and limitations of such processes and to identify the assets and the limitabilities of what they are able to supply for us. It examines how knowledge of facts is secured and consolidated as such, and what the resulting information can and cannot provide. It argues that the unavoidable incompleteness of our factual information also endows it with an element of incorrectness. By looking also at the negative side of human inquiry the book’s perspective clarifies the nature of our grip on the facts that constitute our view of the reality of things.