Philosophy

Aileen Ribeiro on Facing Beauty

Spanning four centuries of fashion and art history, Aileen Ribeiro’s Facing Beauty: Painted Women and Cosmetic Art, illuminates shifting perceptions of female beauty through works of art and the evolution of cosmetics. This new book explores everyday perceptions of beauty in the Western world and the ways in which women utilized

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Childism Continues

Follow @yaleSCIbooks In the past weeks, we covered the deaths associated with a book on childrearing, bringing it into conversation with Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children, a new book by psychoanalyst and writer Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. All too sadly, it was not long before we shared the news that Young-Bruehl passed

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For Whom You Love

“I love you.” We call them “three little words,” and yet in Western thought, love as a concept is anything but a small concern. In fact, in Love: A History, Simon May demonstrates the way in which love has grown into a veritable colossus in our cultural consciousness, providing the

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Nigel Warburton on Immanuel Kant

An excerpt from Nigel Warburton’s A Little History of Philosophy, a lively and accessible introduction to Western philosophy, bringing the ideas of the world’s greatest thinkers into focus. from Socrates’ questions about reality to Peter Singer’s thinking on the moral status of animals in our own times.   Nigel Warburton—

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Lest We Forget: What It’s Like to Lose It

Sarah Underwood— Quite a few people, places, and things “lost it” in 2011. Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Greecelost it early on this year. Osama bin Laden lost it. Multiple Arab dictators lost it. The economy never had it, but Greecemanaged to lose it again. The media keeps suggesting that even

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In Memoriam: Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

We at Yale University Press are very sad to report the untimely passing of Elisabeth Young-Bruehl last Thursday, December 1, at age 65. As a psychoanalyst and philosopher, Young-Bruehl brought her interest in the ideologies of prejudice to her many books, including her YUP biographies of Anna Freud and mentor

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PBS Airs the Journey of the Universe Documentary Film

Follow @yaleSCIbooks In his television series Cosmos, whose Emmy-award winning co-creator served as one of the directors of the new film Journey of the Universe, astronomer Carl Sagan declared, “We are all stardust.” The sentiment was already a familiar one, for in Joni Mitchell’s famous 1970 song “Woodstock,” she too

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For the Un-Occupied

Follow @yaleSCIbooks What with the tents that have been pitched in parks all over the country and the slogans to be found on everything from Twitter feeds to t-shirts, it is starting to seem like everything in America is occupied. Yet for those of us far from Wall Street, the

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3@2 Interview: Nancy Abrams and Joel Primack on The New Universe and the Human Future

Follow @yaleSCIbooks The newest 3@2 Interview brings Terry Lecturers Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack, authors of The New Universe and the Human Future, to discuss the new scientific picture of the universe and its meaning for our lives, societies, and long-term future as a species.   Yale University

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Are We Spanking Out of Prejudice?

Follow @yaleSCIbooks A self-published book encourages parents to employ corporal punishment to tragic effect, the New York Times reported Monday. The book, To Train Up a Child, is the work of Tennessee preacher Michael Pearl and his wife Debi, and includes recommendations on how to use “the rod” to make

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