Philosophy

The seventeen contributions constituting this edited volume focus on archaic Greek thought — Presocratics broadly understood, including Sophists, Archaic poets, or Tragedians — and its multiform reception, use or appropriation through times and lands.

The first chapters deal with the direct reconstruction and understanding of early Greek thought, from the very first philosophical writings to the last Presocratic philosopher. By alternating discussions of editorial and translation issues, stylistic analysis, geographical study and history of science, these contributions question the value of the testimonies or fragments attributed to those early thinkers and challenge our understanding of the texts at the origin of western philosophy.

The volume subsequently focuses on the echoes of those Archaic voices, over a long period of time from Aristotle to the 20th century. From their early reception in Greek and Roman time to their adaptation in contemporary poetry, by way of their appropriation and use in Islamic philosophy or in Latin-America colonization, the contributions gathered in this second part illustrate the large scope of influence of ancient philosophers and of their ideas in various times and places.

Die im 6. Jh. v. Chr. von Pythagoras ausgehende politisch mystische Lehre erlebte in der Spätantike vor allem im Umfeld des Neuplatonismus eine wirkmächtige Renaissance, die am eindrücklichsten im Werk des Iamblichos von Chalkis dokumentiert ist. Zum Verständnis seiner noch häufig verkannten Vorlesung "Über das Pythagoreische Leben" bahnt die Studie zum ersten Mal einen Weg, indem sie den vielgestaltigen geistes- und literaturgeschichtlichen Hintergrund entfaltet, vor dem sich Konzeption und Intention des Textes im zeitgenössischen Kontext erschließen lassen. Eine kommentierende Strukturanalyse macht deutlich, welche Schlüsselrolle der neuplatonische Lehrer dem altehrwürdigen Weisen innerhalb seines ethisch-philosophischen Erziehungskonzeptes beimisst.

Das Buch stellt einen Meilenstein in der Aristoteles-Forschung dar, der mit einigen traditionellen Interpretationen der aristotelischen Philosophie radikal bricht.
An dem Fundamentalbegriff der Metaphysik, ousia (Sein, Wesen, "Seiendheit"), auf der einen, und dem Fundamentalbegriff der Ethik, eudaimonia (Glück, Glückseligkeit), auf der anderen Seite werden grundlegende Zusammenhänge zwischen der theoretischen und der praktischen Philosophie des Aristoteles dargestellt. Der Autor kommt dabei zu völlig neuen und interessanten Erkenntnissen über die Strukturen des aristotelischen Denkens.

Dieses Werk bereichert die Aristoteles-Forschung, die Philosophie des Geistes und die Ethik.

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, existence is perpetual transformation. Humans and gods become plants and animals, stones and stars—or something in between. No rigid distinctions remain untroubled. In his own time and in ours, Ovid’s work challenges fundamental assumptions about the universe and humans’ place in it.

Metamorphoses Reimagined offers a twenty-first-century retelling of Ovid’s masterpiece that decenters the human. Michael Marder reinvents the text in new genres—letters, essays, confessions, prayers, poetic fragments, and dramatic dialogues, among others—some picking up where the original left off, others reconceiving the narrative in alternative forms. Marder’s metamorphoses invert protagonists’ relationships and reinterpret their transformations, playing with stylistic adaptations and foregrounding nonanthropocentric points of view. Above all, they explore the metamorphosis of language itself and ask in what, if any, sense the notion and the figure of the human are worth holding onto today.

Providing fresh perspective on Ovid’s classic in light of contemporary concerns, Metamorphoses Reimagined is a work of breathtaking philosophical, literary, and linguistic experimentation, proposing creative ways to write and think, to be and become.

In his Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant noted that the understanding intuits nothing. Now, the significance of this insight comes to light. Tristan Burt explains why our intuition of nothing resolves a central philosophical problem: how can we know what is (absolutely) real? The answer to this question is as surprising, and amusing, as reality itself.

For both Judaism and Christianity, the Menorah is an iconic artefact. It played a crucial role as an implement of the Tabernacle in the desert and the Temple in Jerusalem. After the destruction of the Temple and the eventual loss of the Menorah, it became the quintessential symbol of the Jewish people. It also figures prominently in Christian thought and imagery. Especially Christian monumental seven-branched candelabra raise questions about their spatial aesthetics as well as their liturgical and performative functions.

This volume offers interdisciplinary reflections on the Menorah in both Jewish and Christian traditions, and thus contributes not only to a better understanding of their cultural entanglement in pre-modern times, but also to a more differentiated view of their specific and contextualaesthetic qualities.

In the last years of his life, Henry David Thoreau created something new. Part blueprint for a major new work, part scientific chart, and part re-envisioning of the way we experience the passage of time, Thoreau’s Kalendar was more a tool than a text. Comprised of six multipage charts of “general phenomena,” the Kalendar was an instrument for recording not just natural and weather-related phenomena, but also the hidden relations among them—between the skies of one June and the skies of past and future Junes—relations we often feel but can’t quite hold, rooted as we typically are in our own brief moment of linear time. 

Combining reproductions of Thoreau’s hand-drawn charts with transcriptions of the Kalendar’s text and essays by acclaimed poet and scholar Kristen Case, this gorgeously crafted volume illuminates the final project of one of America’s most treasured writers and naturalists and offers a timeless, transformative vision of how to live harmoniously with the living world around us.  

Der Historiker Dieter Groh hat in enger Zusammenarbeit mit seiner Frau Ruth ein mannigfaltiges Werk geschaffen, das in vielen Wissenschaften rezipiert wurde. Autor*innen aus Geschichtswissenschaft, Kunstgeschichte, Literaturwissenschaft, Philosophie, Politikwissenschaft und Paläoanthropologie diskutieren die Schriften und deren Relevanz für heutige Forschungen.

Eliza Fowler Haywood (c. 1693-1756) was a prolific writer, actress, a widely connected scholar, a critical philosopher, and economist. Her contributions to moral philosophy and economics provide a clear view of early 18th century English society.

The second volume of the philosopher and economist’s Memoirs… focuses more closely on the political, strategical failures of the English ministries as mediators between the Sovereign and the people, examining the accompanying decadence and moral decline of the English population. At the core lies Haywood’s observation that women are the first to suffer from the consequences of societal and financial crises.

300 years after its first publication in 1724, this comprehensive edition of Eliza Haywood’s Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia makes accessible a fundamental utopian text. Illustrating the threat of moral decline in financial crises, Haywood’s sharp critique of a government ignoring the needs of its own people remains compelling today.

The central issue explored in this book is the problem of difference in democratic theory, focusing on the debates between liberalism and realism. Realist theories critique liberal models for ignoring community-specific differences and reducing plural forms of life to a homogeneous political project. This book argues that while realist models challenge the universalism of liberalism, they fail to normatively ground the adjudication of differences and cannot distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate political practices.

The core argument proposes the development of “particularist political principles” as a solution, providing an ethical framework for adjudicating difference without relying on universal norms. Drawing on moral particularism, the book demonstrates how contingent, context-dependent reasoning can resolve issues of representation and pluralism in democracy while avoiding the pitfalls of both universalism and discriminatory practices.

This research is relevant for scholars of political theory exploring new approaches to grounding pluralism and difference in contemporary democratic thought.

Le traité d’Ibn Ṣāliḥ Sur les miroirs ardents paraboliques représente une contribution majeure à l’histoire de l’optique géométrique. Le présent ouvrage contient la première édition de ce texte, accompagnée d’une traduction française et d’un commentaire historique et mathématique.

L’intérêt principal du texte d’Ibn Ṣāliḥ consiste dans la manière originale dont il construit sa démarche catoptrique à partir des œuvres optiques et géométriques de la tradition. Partant des recherches d’Ibn al-Haytham (XI^e siècle) sur les miroirs paraboliques, il infléchit le traitement de ces objets dans deux directions nouvelles : tout d’abord, Ibn Ṣāliḥ traduit dans les termes de la géométrie d’Euclide des propriétés des coniques traitées par ses prédécesseurs arabes dans le style d’Apollonius ; en second lieu, il montre un intérêt technique pour la construction des miroirs, dont il fournit un véritable manuel à l’attention des architectes et des ingénieurs de l’entourage de Shāh Jahān.

Le présent ouvrage contient en outre la première édition d’un traité catoptrique anonyme conservé en Inde. Ces nouveaux matériaux permettent de documenter pour la première fois les développements remarquables de la catoptrique arabe au XVII^e siècle, ainsi que les avancées de la science islamique dans l’Inde moghole à l’époque de Shāh Jahān.

Politische Theorie macht seit jeher, entweder explizit oder implizit, anthropologische Annahmen. Das gilt auch und gerade für politische Theorien, die in der Antike entwickelt wurden. Antike Denker stützten politische Aussagen vielleicht sogar expliziter und unproblematischer durch Aussagen über die Natur des Menschen und seine Stellung im Weltganzen als spätere Autoren. Dieser Band ist der erste, der den Beitrag antiker Philosophen zur politischen Anthropologie als eigenes Thema vorstellt. Intendiert ist jedoch kein Handbuch, sondern eine Sammlung von Stellungnahmen zu spezifischen Forschungsfragen. Dabei wird das gesamte Spektrum der antiken Philosophie von den Vorsokratikern über Platon, Aristoteles und die Stoa bis zu den römischen Autoren Cicero, Seneca und Augustinus abgedeckt. Die Beitragenden sind Maximilian Forschner, Kosta Gligorijevic, Luca Hemmerich, Christoph Horn, Dirk Jörke, Dagmar Kiesel, Christian Kietzmann, Annika von Lüpke, Jörn Müller, Georg Rechenauer, Simon Varga, Jula Wildberger, Florian Zacher.

Bildung zählt zu den Dauerproblemen, mit denen sich moderne Gesellschaften konfrontiert sehen. Entsprechend ausdifferenziert erweist sich auch die wissenschaftliche Thematisierung von Bildung. Der vorliegende Band geht von der Annahme aus, dass Bildung disziplinär nicht exklusiv zurechenbar ist, sondern nach einer inter- und transdisziplinären Orientierung von Theoriebildung und Forschung verlangt. Der vorliegende Band versammelt Beiträge aus unterschiedlichen Fächern und zielt darauf ab, verschiedene disziplinäre Perspektiven auf Bildung miteinander in ein Gespräch zu bringen. Ein besonderer Schwerpunkt liegt darauf, die Thematisierung von Bildung in Bezug auf ihre philosophischen Voraussetzungen zu diskutieren. Eine Bearbeitung der Frage, worin gelingende Bildung heute bestehen könnte und welche anthropologischen, gesellschaftstheoretischen sowie moralisch-ethischen Bezüge hierbei zu berücksichtigen wären, trägt nicht nur dazu bei, dass bestimmte Selbstverständlichkeiten in der Rede von Bildung erneut in Probleme transformiert werden. Sie bedeutet darüber hinaus, dass die Thematisierung dieses gesellschaftlichen Dauerproblems für das Erwägen möglicher Alternativen offen bleibt.

Die Arbeit stellt den als systematische Interpretation angelegten Versuch dar, die Art und Weise des Entstehens offenbarungsreligiöser Narration im Kontext von Kants Religionsphilosophie zu erklären. Im Sinne eines übergeordneten Beweisziels soll demonstriert werden, dass es letztlich Vernunft ist, die sich (in einem diffizilen, von Kant „Hypotypose“ genannten Prozess) ihre Gehalte unter Zuhilfenahme der Einbildungs- und Urteilskraft bildlich ‚vor Augen‘ stellt. So kann einerseits erklärt werden, warum sich der „Offenbarungsglaube“ in moralischer Hinsicht oftmals als defizient erweist (er hält das, was bloß (indirekte) Darstellung ist, für die Sache (den Vernunftbegriff) selbst), andererseits erlaubt der Zugriff über die kantische Vermögenslehre auch eine systematische Ableitung der in der ‚Religionsschrift‘ behandelten (und dort z. T. neu eingeführten) Ideen. In zahlreichen Einzelanalysen wird nachgewiesen, dass der erzählerische Fundus der verschiedenen Offenbarungsschriften (etwa Himmel, Hölle, Teufel, Gott (als Gesetzgeber, Regent und Richter) oder der ‚Idealmensch‘) letztlich dunkle Metaphysik darstellt, dass es sich also um als Konkreta gedachte Ideen einer noch unaufgeklärten (‚gemeinen‘) Vernunft handelt.

In Prophetic Statesmanship: Harry V. Jaffa, Abraham Lincoln, and the Gettysburg Address, Edward J. Erler presents the lesser-known, late-life scholarship of renowned Lincoln scholar, Harry Victor Jaffa. Through a deep reading of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural, Erler considers some of Jaffa’s startling discoveries about Lincoln, Aquinas, Aristotle, and America’s political founding—discoveries that sometimes seem to contradict Jaffa’s own prior writing and often contradict the existing scholarly consensus. 

In 1959, Jaffa established himself as a foremost Lincoln scholar when he published Crisis of the House Divided, a revolutionary breakthrough in the understanding of Lincoln’s political philosophy. But by the time Jaffa published A New Birth of Freedom (2000), he had developed a deeper understanding of what is known as the “theological-political question,” the conflict between theology and politics in philosophical thought. Jaffa referred to this development as his “second sailing.” 

Jaffa was never able to flesh out his evolving ideas about the “theological-political question,” as it concerns Abraham Lincoln, while he was alive. At the behest of Jaffa, his student Edward Erler wrote this book to do just that.

With his own scholarly aplomb Erler explores Jaffa’s scholarship on Aristotle’s presence in the American founding; Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Aquinas’s surprising, shared—albeit concealed—vision of participatory government; the union of divine law and natural law in the American founding; and the primacy of prudence as supreme political virtue; among other topics. 

This is a book for anyone interested in the past and future of American political thought. 

Die antike Philosophie hat unterschiedliche Formen von Begründung und Erklärung entwickelt, die für die Wissenschaftsgeschichte einflussreich waren.

Die Beiträge des 7. Kongresses der Gesellschaft für antike Philosophie (GANPH), der vom 4. bis 7. Oktober 2022 in Marburg stattfand, gehen diesen Ansätzen nach und umfassen die gesamte Zeit der griechisch-römischen Antike, von den Vorsokratikern bis in die christliche Spätantike. Dabei wird auch die Frage beleuchtet, in welchem Verhältnis Erklärungsansätze der Philosophie zu anderen Ansätzen standen, wie sie Epos, Tragödie, Geschichtsschreibung sowie Mythos und Religion entwickelten. Auf diese Weise bietet der Band eine große Breite von Interpretationen unterschiedlicher Texte.

Leitfragen sind: Wie verlaufen Argumentationen in philosophischen und wissenschaftlichen Texten der Antike? Welche anderen Formen der Erklärung, etwa in epischer und dramatische Form, gibt es? Wo und warum integrieren philosophische und wissenschaftliche Autoren Formen nicht-wissenschaftlicher Erklärungen? Welche Formen von Wissenschaftstheorie gibt es, und welche Erklärungsmuster bieten sie?

Abgerundet wird das Themenspektrum durch einen Ausblick darauf, wie moderne Wissenschaftstheorie Erklärungsmuster in den Wissenschaften (v. a. den Naturwissenschaften) diskutiert und welche Überlegungen zum Erklärungspotential narrativer Modelle es gibt.

What is art? What does art offer? Why does art move us? The CRC Different Aesthetics pursues these questions. In doing so, and by directing its attention towards the 2000-year history of European culture and art before the 18^th century, it aims to transform perspectives within aesthetic discussions. This volume introduces the research undertaken by the CRC 1391. It outlines the benefits of concentrating on the pre-modern period, lays out the subsequent adjustments to analytical tools and methods, and presents the resulting consequences for the study of aesthetics.

The contributions, which range from philology and literary studies, art history, archaeology, and musicology to historical science, theology, and the digital humanities offer concrete examples of this approach.

This is the first full-text English translation of a seminal book within the phenomenological movement.

The work was orginally published in 1922 in Edmund Husserl’s yearbook Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, and has had a wide impact on work in phenomenology (Husserl, Heideger, Stein) and social ontology. Gerda Walther broaches the topic of social ontology, i.e., a study of social communities. She carries out this task by using the phenomenological method, that is, a study of the first-person (both singular and plural) experience of being a part of a community, what it feels like internally (and its constitutive elements), how it relates to other individuals or other communities, and how unifications between individiuals and communities or between communities take place.

The book is an important contribution to the phenomenology of intersubjectivity or the study of social ontology. Social ontology has been an important and fruitful field of research in contemporary social theory, cognitive science, and other disciplines. It will be a crucial contribution to current research.

In Iran gehört Kant zu den meist diskutierten Philosophen überhaupt. Seine Schriften werden von unterschiedlichen philosophischen und politischen Lagern rezipiert und im Verhältnis zu wichtigen islamischen Philosophen wie Avicenna und Molla Sadra diskutiert. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht Kontext und Zugänge der Kantrezeption in Iran und zeigt, wie Kants Denken einen festen Platz im philosophischen Diskurs des Iran erhalten hat.

What is beauty, and what is its political function? In what ways might it help undermine white supremacy and cultivate a more democratic political culture? Democracy and Beauty shines a light on W. E. B. Du Bois’s attempts to answer these questions during the decade surrounding the First World War and, in so doing, offers a groundbreaking account of the philosopher’s aesthetics.

Robert Gooding-Williams reconstructs Du Bois’s defense of the political potential of beauty to challenge oppressive systems and foster an inclusive democracy. White supremacy is a powerful force that defies rational revision, Du Bois argued, because it is rooted in the entrenched routines of its adherents. Beauty, however, has a distinctive role to play in the struggle against white supremacy. It can strengthen resolve and ward off despair by showing the oppressed that they can alter their social world, and it can unsettle and even transform the pernicious habits that perpetuate white supremacy. Gooding-Williams also explores Du Bois’s account of the interplay among white supremacy, Christianity, capitalism, and imperialism as well as key tensions in his work. A rich engagement with Du Bois’s philosophy of beauty, this book demonstrates the relevance of his social thought and aesthetics to present-day arguments about Black pessimism, Black optimism, and the aesthetic turn in Black studies.

In the early 1950s, the young Michel Foucault took a keen interest in the method of existential analysis—Daseinsanalyse—developed by the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger. He gave a lecture course on this topic at the University of Lille in the spring of 1953 and wrote a detailed introduction to the 1954 French translation of Binswanger’s Dream and Existence (1930), in which he promised a forthcoming book that would “situate existential analysis within the development of contemporary reflection on man.” This book presents Foucault’s unpublished manuscript on Binswanger and existential analysis for the first time in English, offering crucial insight into his intellectual development.

Foucault carries out a systematic examination of Daseinsanalyse, contrasting it with psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology and championing its ambition to understand mental illness. In his critique of existential analysis, Foucault began his turn toward emphasizing the primacy of experience, which would lead to the radically new perspective and genealogical methods of The History of Madness and The History of Sexuality. Revealing a little-known influence on Foucault’s historicist approach, Binswanger and Existential Analysis reminds us of his unparalleled ability to destabilize our conceptions of self.

Das Verhältnis zwischen Rationalität und Moralität, der philosophische Humanismus, innovative Perspektiven auf Freiheit und Verantwortung sind nur einige der Themen der Philosophie von Julian Nida-Rümelin bietet die Sammlung ein breites Spektrum an Denkanstößen. Die Autor/-innen, oft selbst Studenten von Nida-Rümelin und heute wichtige Stimmen im zeitgenössischen wissenschaftlichen Diskurs, setzen sich kritisch mit seinem Werk auseinander und liefern eine differenzierte Reflexion über dessen Beitrag zur Philosophie. Zu den Beiträger*innen gehören unter anderem die Berliner Strafrechtlerin Tatjana Hörnle, der Philosoph Erasmus Mayr (Erlangen), der Rechtshistoriker Dietmar von der Pfordten (Göttingen) und die Philosophin Katja Vogt (Columbia University, New York NY).

Dieser Band ist nicht nur eine Würdigung eines bedeutenden philosophischen Oeuvres, sondern trägt auch zu dessen kritischer Weiterentwicklung bei. Durch die Integration neuer Denkansätze und die kritische Reflexion über Nida-Rümelins Werk eröffnet die Sammlung einen Raum für weiterführende Diskussionen innerhalb der philosophischen Fachcommunity.

What does it mean to love? Does love complete us, giving us purpose and meaning? Or does it tie us down and even harm us? Is erotic desire complicit in oppression, or could it deliver liberation? Are our desires extricable from the wrongs of our societies? And in today’s world, is love still worth the trouble?

This book develops a critical theory of sexual love and friendship, offering profound new ways to understand the troublesome nature of eros. Federica Gregoratto explores the ambivalence of erotic love, which is at once intimately interwoven with heterosexism, racism, and neoliberal capitalism yet entices us with the tantalizing possibility of transformation. Drawing on a rich array of sources—from Frankfurt School critical theory to feminist thought and contemporary philosophies of emotions and affects, as well as poetry, novels, films, and music—she argues that love provides unexpected resources for political agency, resistance, and emancipation. Gregoratto makes a passionate defense of erotic freedom as an adventurous process through which we understand, together with others, who we are and who we want to become, both in our individual existences and in our social lives. Wide-ranging and daring, Love Troubles invites us to reflect on our fraught amorous experiences, showing why we should cherish and learn from them.

This collection of essays delves into the central human problem of interpersonal violence, proposing nonviolence as a powerful antidote. Drawing from the author’s personal experiences, philosophical reflections, and scholarly work over the past two decades, the book offers a multifaceted exploration of nonviolence through ethical, spiritual, and practical lenses. Beginning with the author’s early pacifism shaped by the violence of the 1980s and the post-9/11 world, the essays provide insights into the complexities of practicing nonviolence in a violent society.

The book examines various aspects of nonviolence, including the ethical foundations rooted in love and morality, the influence of spirituality and disciplined practice on peacemaking, and the practical challenges of nonviolent parenting. It engages with critical theories of violence, critiques deterministic views of human aggression, and explores the role of somaesthetics and body consciousness in cultivating a nonviolent ethos. The essays also tackle the philosophical underpinnings of political nonviolence, from pacifism and nonresistance to pragmatic approaches that challenge traditional definitions of success in conflict.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, the book weaves together historical analysis, philosophical discourse, and personal narrative to present nonviolence as more than an ideal but as a practical guide for living. It highlights the importance of virtues such as kindness, empathy, and respect, drawing on the works of influential figures such as Gandhi, King, and Nhat Hanh. Ultimately, this collection seeks to inspire readers to consider nonviolence not merely as an ethical stance but as a transformative way of being in the world, offering hope for a less violent future.

Wittgenstein used the concept of language games to refer to all forms of linguistic expression in practical contexts and to the myriad ways in which signs are used in language. He used the term to specify speaking as an activity and to relate it to a form of life. Wittgenstein was well aware that his proposal for “language games” did not solve the central problems of language. Until today, the essential characteristics of the concept remain unspecified.

The contributors in this volume analyze the reasons for the difficulties in understanding the concept and propose new essential characteristics and contents, by examining language games such as certainty and error, belief, strategy, and their linguistic foundations.

Under the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE), a self-described recluse wrote a series of essays denouncing the evils of his time. Assailing corruption, misrule, and neglect of the common people, Wang Fu’s Essays of a Recluse (Qianfulun) offers a rare outsider view of culture, society, and government during this period. This book presents the first full English translation of the Qianfulun, one of the most significant works to survive from the Eastern Han period.

Wang’s essays range across moral philosophy, cosmology, education, military affairs, and conflict in the borderlands. The essays decry governmental corruption and rampant litigiousness, as well as the callous neglect of the poor and the exploitation of women. To remedy these failures, Wang Fu calls for heeding the wisdom of the classics and implementing procedures for recruiting worthy officials. His focused interest in the common people and sensitivity to their travails make Essays of a Recluse a rich source of information about daily life during the Eastern Han period, providing insights into folk religion, divination, marriage practices, and the legal system. Widely admired in his lifetime, Wang’s essays were later singled out by Han Yu (768–824 CE) as one of the three great works of the period. Anne Behnke Kinney and John S. Major’s expert translation makes an important but notoriously complex and difficult work accessible to a range of English-language readers.

What is the relationship between the ethical transformation of the self and the political transformation of the world? This book explores the ways several twentieth-century thinkers can help us relate the “care of the self” to the “care of the other,” tracing their accounts of how and why practices intended to change an individual can help spur social and political change, just as collective political action can produce a transformation of the self.

Daniel Louis Wyche examines the political implications of what he calls practices of ethical self-change. These include Pierre Hadot’s notion of “spiritual exercises”; what the French sociologist of labor Georges Friedmann calls the “interior effort”; Michel Foucault’s ethics of the “care of the self”; what Martin Luther King Jr. refers to as the work of “self-purification” integral to direct action; and Audre Lorde’s claim that caring for herself constitutes a form of “political warfare.” Wyche argues that these concepts can collectively provide an understanding that effaces distinctions between the care of the self, the other, and the community in a way that avoids reducing the political to the ethical. Ambitious and nuanced, The Care of the Self and the Care of the Other offers a framework for unifying individual moral action and collective political life.