The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture collects essays and lectures by Georges Bataille spanning 30 years of research in anthropology, comparative religion, aesthetics, and philosophy. These were neither idle nor idyllic years; the discovery of Lascaux in 1940 coincides with the bloodiest war in history—with new machines of death, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima. Bataille's reflections on the possible origins of humanity coincide with the intensified threat of its possible extinction.

Cheaper to buy together. The shrink-wrapped set of all 4 titles in the series. The four classic titles from today's most controversial and provocative public intellectual, beautifully repackaged with new introductions from Zizek himself. The Sublime Object of Ideology is a provocative and original work looking at the question of agency in a postmodern world. The Ticklish Subject examines the legacy of the Cartesian subject, and unearths its revolutionary and emancipatory potential. The Plague of Fantasies explores the relations between fantasy and ideology, and the antagonism between our abstracted lives and the pseudo-concrete images surrounding us. The Fragile Absolute argues that teh subversive core of the Christian tradition must be wrested away from the Fundamentalists, and pressed into the service of a Marxist politics.

The Verge of Philosophy is both an exploration of the limits of philosophy and a memorial for John Sallis’s longtime friend and interlocutor Jacques Derrida. The centerpiece of the book is an extended examination of three sites in Derrida’s thought: his interpretation of Heidegger regarding the privileging of the question; his account of the Platonic figure of the good; and his interpretation of Plato’s discourse on the crucial notion of the chora, the originating space of the universe. Sallis’s reflections are given added weight—even poignancy—by his discussion of his many public and private philosophical conversations with Derrida over the decades of their friendship. This volume thus simultaneously serves to mourn and remember a friend and to push forward the deeply searching discussions that lie at the very heart of that friendship.

NOW IN B FORMAT. Zizek argues that the physical violence we see is often generated by the systemic violence that sustains our political and economic systems. With the help of eminent philosophers like Marx, Engel and Lacan, as well as frequent references to popular culture, he examines the real causes of violent outbreaks like those seen in Israel and Palestine and in terrorist acts around the world. Ultimately, he warns, doing nothing is often the most violent course of action we take.

The role of freedom in assigning moral responsibility is one of the deepest problems in metaphysics and moral theory. Incompatibilisms Allure provides original analysis of the principal arguments for incompatibilism. Ishtiyaque Haji incisively examines the consequence argument, the direct argument, the deontic argument, the manipulation argument, the impossibility argument and the luck objection. He introduces the most important contemporary discussions in a manner accessible to advanced undergraduates, but also suited to professional philosophers. The result is a unique and compelling account for incompatibilisms continuing allure.

The field of Queer Theory has long been dominated by the work of Judith Butler and the focus on Performativity. This exciting collection of new work proposes a major paradigm shift in debates on sexuality: a shift away from discourse, identity and signification, to a radical new conception of bodily materialism. Top of page

Brian Leftow makes an important contribution to the longstanding debate among philosophers and theologians about the nature of God’s eternity. The author develops a powerful and original defense of the notion that God is eternal in that he exists timelessly; that is, that though God exists, he does not exist at any time. Leftow defends the claim that a timeless God can be an object of human experience, and he attempts to delineate the extent of such a God’s omniscience. Finally, the author pays special attention to the relation between the claim that God is timeless and the claim that God is metaphysically simple.