Routledge Focus on Philosophy
About the Book Series
Routledge Focus on Philosophy is an exciting and innovative new series, capturing and disseminating some of the best and most exciting new research in philosophy in short book form. Peer reviewed and at a maximum of fifty thousand words shorter than the typical research monograph, Routledge Focus on Philosophy titles are available in both ebook and print on demand format. Tackling big topics in a digestible format the series opens up important philosophical research for a wider audience, and as such is invaluable reading for the scholar, researcher and student seeking to keep their finger on the pulse of the discipline. The series also reflects the growing interdisciplinarity within philosophy and will be of interest to those in related disciplines across the humanities and social sciences.
War, Pacifism, and Deterrence: A Pragmatist-Transcendental Perspective
1st Edition
By Sami Pihlström
June 24, 2026
In our troubled times of global conflict, philosophical reflection on war and peace has never been more urgent. This distinctive contribution to the ethics of war combines pragmatism with Kantian-inspired transcendental philosophy to offer fresh insights into age-old questions of when, if ever, war...
The Moral Problems of Competition
1st Edition
By Yvette Drissen
May 12, 2026
Competition is a key element in the institutional design in Western liberal democracies. This book offers a conceptual and normative analysis of the value and ethics of competition. We compete for jobs, promotions, grants, prizes, access to selective (university) programmes, and the recognition and...
Performative Beauty: A Pragmatist and Somaesthetic Account
1st Edition
By Falk Heinrich
March 02, 2026
This book develops an original theory of performative beauty by reconsidering and reworking Deweyan pragmatic aesthetics through the lens of somaesthetics, contemporary embodiment theories, and philosophies of play. While philosophical aesthetics has traditionally focused on beauty as a property of...
Global Justice for Children: A Capability Approach
1st Edition
By Gottfried Schweiger
November 05, 2025
While global justice is a hot topic in political philosophy, the place of children and children as a particular group of agents has been largely ignored. This book explores global justice for children from the perspective of the capability approach. The capability approach provides a ...
The Virtue of Playfulness: Why Happy People Are Playful
1st Edition
By boomer trujillo
September 28, 2025
This book argues that in order for people to live well, they must develop a virtue of playfulness. Inspired by Aristotle, the book draws on work from philosophy, classics, history, biology, psychology, and media studies to understand the place of play and playfulness in a good life. Many ...
Cultural Appropriation: Wrongs and Rights
1st Edition
By Aurélia Bardon, Jennifer M. Page
April 22, 2025
From the fashion label Dior being accused of cultural appropriation after using American Indian imagery in an ad campaign for its “Sauvage” fragrance, to the backlash against Kendall Jenner’s afro-esque hairstyle in Vogue, debates about cultural appropriation have reached a fever pitch. In this ...
Sexual Orientation and Identity: A Philosophical Analysis
1st Edition
By Matthew Andler
March 28, 2025
Sexual orientation and how we might understand it is a topic that arouses significant controversy. Is sexual orientation a natural or social phenomenon? Are categories such as 'queer' and 'straight' essential to the human condition or dependent on contingent cultural practices? While such questions...
State Secrecy and Democracy: A Philosophical Inquiry
1st Edition
By Dorota Mokrosinska
January 30, 2025
In the wake of controversial disclosures of classified government information by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, questions about the democratic status of secret uses of political power are rarely far from the headlines. Despite an increase in initiatives aimed at enhancing government transparency – ...
Ethical Health: Managing Our Moral Impulses
1st Edition
By Joel Marks
January 23, 2025
This book argues that moralism is a troublesome emotion of the sort one might seek help with from a psychotherapist. Its focus is on how to disabuse ourselves of the illusion that our values are objective, as well as how to manage the manifestations of its residual presence. This thesis may seem ...
Moral Blackmail: Coercion, Responsibility, and Global Justice
1st Edition
By Ben Colburn
October 17, 2024
Moral Blackmail: Coercion, Responsibility, and Global Justice identifies a novel kind of forced action, yet one that is relatively neglected in ethics and moral philosophy. Moral blackmail occurs when someone is forced to do something because someone else has made all its alternatives morally ...
Aristotle on Natural Simultaneity of Relatives in the Categories
1st Edition
By António Pedro Mesquita
October 09, 2024
This book addresses the issue of natural simultaneity of relatives, discussed by Aristotle in Categories 7, 7b15– 8a12. Natural simultaneity is a form of symmetrical ontological dependence that holds between items that are not causally linked. In this section of the Categories, Aristotle introduces...
Moralistics and Psychomoralistics: A Unified Cognitive Science of Moral Intuition
1st Edition
By Graham Wood
October 09, 2024
This book brings together three distinct research programmes in moral psychology – Moral Foundations Theory, Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange, and the Linguistic Analogy in Moral Psychology – and shows that they can be combined to create a unified cognitive science of moral intuition. The ...