The philosophy of perception investigates the nature of our sensory experiences and their relation to reality. In the second edition of this popular book, William Fish introduces the subject thematically, setting out the major theories of perception together with their motivations and attendant problems. While providing historical background to debates in the field, this comprehensive overview focuses on recent presentations and defenses of the different theories, and looks beyond visual perception to take into account the role of other senses.
The second edition organizes the contents into two main parts: the first deals with philosophical theories of perception, and the second covers key topics and issues in perception as they are discussed in philosophy, cognitive science, and psychology. Two completely new chapters have been added – one on color and color vision; and a second on the interaction between sense modalities – and other chapters have been significantly updated to include discussion of topics such as pre-twentieth-century philosophy of perception, phenomenal intentionality, color adverbialism, predictive processing approaches to perception, ecological approaches to perception, and in-depth discussions of the non-visual senses. Additional updates include fuller and easier-to-understand explanations of some important views that were glossed over in the first edition and greater coverage of research from the last 25 years. All chapter summaries, references, and Suggested Reading lists at the end of each chapter have been brought up to date and the volume now includes a glossary and a more extensive index at the back of the book.
Key Features and Benefits:
The only single-authored textbook on philosophy of perception currently available
Devoted to contemporary theories and topics, but with appropriate historical coverage for fuller understanding of contemporary work
Each chapter includes a chapter overview, questions for further consideration, and an annotated list of Suggested Readings
Includes coverage of topics like:
- the phenomenal principle
- perception and hallucination
- perception and content
- naïve realism and disjunctivismintentionalism and representationalism
- the nature of content
- qualia theories and phenomenal intentionality
- perception and empirical science
- color and color science
- theories of non-visual perception
- Molyneux’s problem
- cross-modal illusions
- multimodality
Key Changes to the Second Edition
The division of the book into two major parts: Part I on philosophical theories of perception, Part II on key interdisciplinary topics in perception
The addition of two new chapters on color and color vision, and interaction between different sense modalities
More topics from the last 25 years of philosophy of perception
Combined chapters on belief acquisition theories and intentional theories into one larger chapter
More material on the growing intersection of the philosophy and psychology of perception
Includes coverage of Molyneux’s problem and of cross-modal illusions
Updated chapter summaries, references, and Suggested Reading lists at the end of each chapter
A glossary and a more extensive index

Jameson's first full-length engagement with Walter Benjamin's work.
The Benjamin Files offers a comprehensive new reading of all of Benjamin's major works and a great number of his shorter book reviews, notes and letters. Its premise is that Benjamin was an anti-philosophical, anti-systematic thinker whose conceptual interests also felt the gravitational pull of his vocation as a writer. What resulted was a coexistence or variety of language fields and thematic codes which overlapped and often seemed to contradict each other: a view which will allow us to clarify the much-debated tension in his works between the mystical or theological side of Benjamin and his political or historical inclination.
The three-way tug of war over his heritage between adherents of his friends Scholem, Adorno and Brecht, can also be better grasped from this position, which gives the Brechtian standpoint more due than most influential academic studies. Benjamin's corpus is an anticipation of contemporary theory in the priority it gives language and representation over philosophical or conceptual unity; and its political motivations are clarified by attention to the omnipresence of History throughout his writing, from the shortest articles to the most ambitious projects. His explicit program – "to transfer the crisis into the heart of language" or, in other words, to detect class struggle at work in the most minute literary phenomena – requires the reader to translate the linguistic or representational literary issues that concerned him back into the omnipresent but often only implicitly political ones. But the latter are those of another era, to which we must gain access, to use one of Benjamin's favorite expressions.

This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature. It includes a new discussion of the Third Analogy, a greatly expanded discussion of Kant's Paralogisms, and entirely new chapters dealing with Kant's theory of reason, his treatment of theology, and the important Appendix to the Dialectic.

Hannah Arendt’s authoritative report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann includes further factual material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account.

"Zizek’s playful writing style presents the reader with apposite and amusing examples, from Franz Kafka to Jane Austen, which clarify and enliven his arguments. Zizek’s book bursts with reflection, observation, wit and raw iconoclastic conclusions. Zizek’s magnetic style and radical ideas are a welcome and inspiring breath of fresh air. It is possible that through revealing how we make sense of our past The Most Sublime Hysteric may help us to cultivate a better future."
——Morning Star
"The Most Sublime Hysteric clearly outlines the logic at the basis of the thought of the most important philosopher of our time. With care and precision, Zizek conjoins Hegel and Lacan, building the components of his own unique and powerful philosophical system. This long-awaited translation of Zizek's doctoral dissertation provides a valuable new point of entry to his work, appropriate for experts and newcomers alike."
——Jodi Dean, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
"Slavoj Zizek’s doctoral thesis on Hegel, Lacan, and the impasses of post-Hegelianism is as fresh today as it was in 1982. Written with his characteristic wit and exceptional lucidity, this book will clarify the foundational ideas of one of the greatest thinkers of our time."
——Kenneth Reinhard, University of California, Los Angeles
"What a fascinating document it is."
——Irish Left Review
What do we know about Hegel? What do we know about Marx? What do we know about democracy and totalitarianism? Communism and psychoanaly sis? What do we know that isn't a platitude that we've heard a thousand times - or a self-satisfied certainty? Through his brilliant reading of Hegel, Slavoj Zizek - one of the most provocative and widely-read thinkers of our time - upends our traditional understanding, dynamites every cliché and undermines every conviction in order to clear the ground for new ways of answering these questions.
When Lacan described Hegel as the ‘most sublime hysteric’, he was referring to the way that the hysteric asks questions because he experiences his own desire as if it were the Other's desire. In the dialectical process, the question asked of the Other is resolved through a reflexive turn in which the question begins to function as its own answer. We had made Hegel into the theorist of abstraction and reaction, but by reading Hegel with Lacan, Zizek unveils a Hegel of the concrete and of revolution - his own, and the one to come.
This early and dazzlingly original work by Zizek offers a unique insight into the ideas which have since become hallmarks of his mature thought. It will be of great interest to anyone interested in critical theory, philosophy and contemporary social thought.

This is a hugely important book that rediscovers three crucial, but long overlooked themes in German idealism: mythology, madness and laughter. "Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism" explores some long neglected but crucial themes in German idealism. Markus Gabriel, one of the most exciting young voices in contemporary philosophy, and Slavoj Zizek, the celebrated contemporary philosopher and cultural critic, show how these themes impact on the problematic relations between being and appearance, reflection and the absolute, insight and ideology, contingency and necessity, subjectivity, truth, habit and freedom. Engaging with three central figures of the German idealist movement, Hegel, Schelling and Fichte, Gabriel and Zizek, who here shows himself to be one of the most erudite and important scholars of German idealism, ask how is it possible for Being to appear in reflection without falling back into traditional metaphysics. By applying idealistic theories of reflection and concrete subjectivity, including the problem of madness and everydayness in Hegel, this hugely important book aims to reinvigorate a philosophy of finitude and contingency, topics at the forefront of contemporary European philosophy.

Infinite Jest is a 1996 novel by David Foster Wallace. The lengthy and complex work takes place in a semi-parodic future version of North America, and touches on substance addiction recovery programs, depression, child abuse, family relationships, advertising, popular entertainment, film theory, Quebec separatism, and tennis, among other topics.
The novel includes 388 numbered endnotes (some of which have footnotes of their own) that explain or expand on points in the story. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Wallace characterized them as a method of disrupting the linearity of the text while maintaining some sense of narrative cohesion.[1]
The novel was included by Time magazine in its list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923.[2]
As of 2006 (ten years after its publication), 150,000 copies of Infinite Jest had been sold and the book has continued to sell steadily.[3]
Wallace was 33 when the novel was published.

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters.

The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions--questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society--through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time.

An exuberantly acclaimed collection -- twenty-two stories that combine hilarity and an escalating disquiet as they expand our ideas of the pleasures fiction can afford.

In this exuberantly praised book - a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner - David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest .

In the stories that make up Oblivion , David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way ("The Suffering Channel"). Or capture the ache of love's breakdown in the painfully polite apologies of a man who believes his wife is hallucinating the sound of his snoring ("Oblivion"). Each of these stories is a complete world, as fully imagined as most entire novels, at once preposterously surreal and painfully immediate.

The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of one of the most iconic novels of our time-now in a dazzling graphic package Winner of the National Book Award, "White Noise" tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultraA-modern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys-radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings-pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.

两条正值青春年少的鱼儿，肩并肩游着，遇到一条年长的鱼。
年长的鱼向他们点头打招呼，“早安啊，孩子们。水怎么样？”
这两条年轻的鱼继续往前游，其中一条终于忍不住，问道：“水到底是个什么东西？”
这是美国作家大卫•福斯特•华莱士2005年在肯扬学院毕业典礼上的演讲，从生活中最显而易见的平常之事入手，讨论如何摆脱生命中的重复单调，获得内心自由，保持意识的清醒鲜活。华莱士提醒我们，生命中最简单的事往往又是最困难的，比如 “在成人生活中，日复一日地保持清自觉与警醒,困难得不可想象。”
这场演讲当时默默无闻，之后却突然逆袭，演讲录音通过邮件和博客在朋友圈不断流转，引发广泛共鸣，后又有工作室根据录音制作了短视频，在Youtube上一个星期的点击量超过400万次。出书之后受到更大的关注，被《时代杂志》评为“对知识分子最后的演讲”，并与乔布斯的演讲一起入选“美国最具影响力的十大毕业演讲”。
遗憾的是，这位天才的作家却在3年后因严重的抑郁症自杀，这也让演讲更加震撼：生活不会总是一帆风顺，我们要学会提醒自己走出思维定势的泥沼；给你身边的人多点空间——因为你不知道他们正面对怎样的困苦。

One of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year
LONGLISTED 2015 – International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.
As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu—beautiful, self-assured—departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze—the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor—had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion—for their homeland and for each other—they will face the toughest decisions of their lives.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today’s globalized world: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s most powerful and astonishing novel yet.

Nick Shay and Klara Sax knew each other once, intimately, and they meet again in the American desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life; she is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence.
Underworld is a story of men and women together and apart, seen in deep, clear detail and in stadium-sized panoramas, shadowed throughout by the overarching conflict of the Cold War. It is a novel that accepts every challenge of these extraordinary times -- Don DeLillo's greatest and most powerful work of fiction.

A Haunting tale of power, corruption, and the complex search for identity Conversation in The Cathedral takes place in 1950s Peru during the dictatorship of Manuel A. Odria. Over beers and a sea of freely spoken words, the conversation flows between two individuals, Santiago and Ambrosia, who talk of their tormented lives and of the overall degradation and frustration that has slowly taken over their town. Through a complicated web of secrets and historical references, Mario Vargas Llosa analyzes the mental and moral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it. More than a historic analysis, Conversation in The Cathedral is a groundbreaking novel that tackles identity as well as the role of a citizen and how a lack of personal freedom can forever scar a people and a nation.