Routledge Classics
About the Book Series
"Routledge Classics is more than just a collection of texts...it embodies and circulates challenging ideas and keeps vital debates current and alive." – Hilary Mantel
The Routledge Classics series, with titles by Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Mary Midgley, was launched in 2001. The series contains the very best of Routledge’s publishing over the past century or so, books that have, by popular consent, become established as classics in their field. Drawing on a fantastic heritage of innovative writing published by Routledge and its associated imprints, this series makes available in attractive, affordable form some of the most important works of modern times.
In 2021 we are delighted to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Routledge Classics series with the publication of fifteen stellar new titles. All include new forewords or introductions and eye-catching cover designs, a hallmark of the series.
The World of Perception
1st Edition
By Maurice Merleau-Ponty
March 12, 2008
'In simple prose Merleau-Ponty touches on his principle themes. He speaks about the body and the world, the coexistence of space and things, the unfortunate optimism of science – and also the insidious stickiness of honey, and the mystery of anger.' - James Elkins Maurice Merleau-Ponty was one of ...
A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Sublime and Beautiful
1st Edition
By Edmund Burke
March 07, 2008
Edited with an introduction and notes by James T. Boulton. 'One of the greatest essays ever written on art.'– The Guardian Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is one of the most important works of aesthetics ever published. Whilst many ...
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature
1st Edition
By William James
March 07, 2008
'Is life worth living? Yes, a thousand times yes when the world still holds such spirits as Professor James.' - Gertrude Stein A classic of American thought, William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience is an extraordinary study of human spirituality in all its forms and one of the most ...
Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out
1st Edition
By Slavoj Zizek
October 30, 2007
The title is just the first of many startling asides, observations and insights that fill this guide to Hollywood on the Lacanian psychoanalyst’s couch. Zizek introduces the ideas of Jacques Lacan through the medium of American film, taking his examples from over 100 years of cinema, from Charlie ...
The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy
1st Edition
By Peter Winch
October 30, 2007
In the fiftieth anniversary of this book’s first release, Winch’s argument remains as crucial as ever. Originally published in 1958, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy was a landmark exploration of the social sciences, written at a time when that field was still young and ...
Enlightenment's Wake: Politics and Culture at the Close of the Modern Age
1st Edition
By John Gray
August 14, 2007
John Gray is the bestselling author of such books as Straw Dogs and Al Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern which brought a mainstream readership to a man who was already one of the UK's most well respected thinkers and political theorists. Gray wrote Enlightenment’s Wake in 1995 – six years after ...
Je, Tu, Nous: Towards a Culture of Difference
1st Edition
By Luce Irigaray
February 26, 2007
A passionate celebrator of "sexual difference," Luce Irigaray was never simply after the social equality that her generation so publicly demanded. She was seeking more fundamentally a society that celebrated the differences between the genders and their coming together in a union without hierarchy....
Judgements on History and Historians
1st Edition
By Jacob Burckhardt
February 26, 2007
Western Civilisation was in its pomp when Jacob Burckhardt delivered his Judgements on History and Historians; European Empires spanned the globe, while the modern age was being forged in the nationalist revolutions of 1848. As a tutor to the young Friedrich Nietzsche as well as one of the first ...
Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture
1st Edition
By Stephen Greenblatt
February 26, 2007
Stephen Greenblatt argued in these celebrated essays that the art of the Renaissance could only be understood in the context of the society from which it sprang. His approach - 'New Historicism' - drew from history, anthropology, Marxist theory, post-structuralism, and psychoanalysis and in ...
Signatures of the Visible
1st Edition
By Fredric Jameson
February 26, 2007
In such celebrated works as Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Fredric Jameson has established himself as one of America’s most observant cultural commentators. In Signatures of the Visible, Jameson turns his attention to cinema - the artform that has replaced the novel...
The Special Theory of Relativity
1st Edition
By David Bohm
September 15, 2006
In these inspiring lectures David Bohm explores Albert Einstein’s celebrated Theory of Relativity that transformed forever the way we think about time and space. Yet for Bohm the implications of the theory were far more revolutionary both in scope and impact even than this. Stepping back from ...
The Family and Individual Development
1st Edition
By D. W. Winnicott
September 06, 2006
The Family and Individual Development represents a decade of writing from a thinker who was at the peak of his powers as perhaps the leading post-war figure in developmental psychiatry. In these pages, Winnicott chronicles the complex inner lives of human beings, from the first encounter between ...