Skip to Main Content
Getting Books Not Available at Reed Library
Interlibrary Loan services allow current Fredonia faculty, staff, and students to request books, articles, book chapters, and other materials that are not owned by Reed Library.
For more information, visit our guide on ILL.
Searching for Books
ReedSearch is often the best place to start your search for books. Below you will find a small selection of items that exist in our physical and digital collections, as well as links to open access collections.
Books By Type
Medieval Philosophy
Medieval Philosophy: A Multicultural Reader comprises a comparative, multicultural reading of the four main traditions of the medieval period with extensive sections on Greek-Byzantine, Latin, Jewish, and Islamic traditions. The book also includes an initial 'Predecessors' section, presenting readings (with introductions) from figures of antiquity upon whom all four traditions have drawn. Representative readings from each of the four great traditions are presented chronologically in four different tracks, along with engaging and accessible introductions to the traditions themselves, as well as each individual thinker-all selected and presented by noted scholars within each respective tradition. This groundbreaking collection: -Offers readings from early thinkers that contextualize the medieval traditions. -Presents, for the first time, extensive readings from the Byzantine Christian tradition that has wielded an important cultural influence from Russia and the Balkans to the Middle East and Northern Africa. -Chooses and interprets texts that are integrally important within each of these four traditions-living traditions that continue to shape values and beliefs today-rather than seen from an external point of view, such as that of a later school of philosophy. -Juxtaposes extensive readings from poetic and mystical elements within these traditions alongside the usual, often more analytical readings. -Features a timeline of the entire period, a map indicating the locations associated with philosophers included in this volume, an annotated guide to further reading on each of these traditions, and an index of names and of subjects that appear in the volume. Given its relevance for approaching the medieval world on its own terms, as well as for understanding the foundations of our own world, the volume is intended not only as an academic textbook and reference work, but as a readable and informative guide for the general reader who wishes to understand these great philosophical and religious traditions that continue to influence our world today-or perhaps to simply glean the wisdom from these enduring texts. This is a culturally inclusive title, which seeks to provide the reader with a rich, varied and comprehensive insight into the entirety of the medieval philosophical world.
Call Number: B721 .M43 2019
ISBN: 9781472580399
Publication Date: 2019-04-04
About Oneself
This volume addresses foundational issues concerning the nature of first-personal, or de se, thought and how such thoughts are communicated. One of the questions addressed is whether there is anything distinctive about first-person thought or whether it can be subsumed under broader phenomena. Many have held that first-person thought motivates a revision of traditional accounts of content or motivates positing special ways of accessing such contents. Gottlob Frege famously held that first-person thoughts involve a subject being 'presented to himself in a particular and primitive way, in which he is presented to no-one else.' However, as Frege also noted, this raises many puzzling questions when we consider how we are able to communicate such thoughts. Is there indeed something special about first-person thought such that it requires a primitive mode of presentation that cannot be grasped by others? If there really is something special about first-person thought, what happens when I communicate this thought to you? Do you come to believe the very thing that I believe? Or is my first-person belief only entertained by me? If it is only entertained by me, how does it relate to what you come to believe? It is these questions that the volume addresses and seeks to answer.
Call Number: BD438.5 .A26 2016
ISBN: 9780198713265
Publication Date: 2016-03-07
Sophistry and Political Philosophy
With Sophistry and Political Philosophy, Robert C. Bartlett provides the first close reading of Plato's two-part presentation of Protagoras. In the "Protagoras," Plato sets out the sophist's moral and political teachings, while the "Theaetetus," offers a distillation of his theoretical and epistemological arguments. Taken together, the two dialogues demonstrate that Protagoras is attracted to one aspect of conventional morality--the nobility of courage, which in turn is connected to piety.
Call Number: B382 .B37 2016
ISBN: 9780226394282
Publication Date: 2016-09-12
The Evil of Banality
How is it possible to murder a million people one by one? Hatred, fear, madness of one or many people cannot explain it. No one can be so possessed for the months, even years, required for genocides, slavery, deadly economic exploitation, sexual trafficking of children. In The Evil of Banality, Elizabeth Minnich argues for a tragic yet hopeful explanation. "Extensive evil," her term for systematic horrific harm-doing, is actually carried out, not by psychopaths, but by people like your quiet next door neighbor, your ambitious colleagues. There simply are not enough moral monsters for extensive evil, nor enough saints for extensive good. In periods of extensive evil, people little different from you and me do its work for no more than a better job, a raise, the house of the family "disappeared" last week. So how can there be hope? The seeds of such evils are right there in our ordinary lives. They are neither mysterious nor demonic. If we avoid romanticizing and so protecting ourselves from responsibility for the worst and the best of which humans are capable, we can prepare to say no to extensive evil - to act accurately, together, and above all in time, before great harm-doing has become the daily work of 'normal' people.
Call Number: B808.7 .M56 2017
ISBN: 9781442276307
Publication Date: 2016-12-07
Philosophy
This dictionary comprises authoritative, highly accessible entries on terminology, concepts, theories, techniques, people, and organizations relating to philosophy. These entries are supplementary to other philosophy titles in the Quick Reference collection, and are written by specialist authors. The dictionary is an ongoing project, and more entries will be added over time.
ISBN: 9780191831089
Publication Date: 2017
In Defence of Wonder and Other Philosophical Reflections
In these lively and provocative essays, philosopher, polymath and all-round intellectual heavyweight, Raymond Tallis debunks commonplace truths, exposes woolly thinking and pulls the rug from beneath a wide range of commentator whether scientist, theologian, philosopher or pundit. Tallis takes to task much of contemporary science and philosophy, arguing that they are guilty of taking us down ever narrowing conduits of problem solving that only invite ever more complex responses and in doing so have lost sight of "wonder" - the metaphysical intoxication that first gave birth to philosophy 2,500 years ago. Tallis tackles some meaty topics - memory, time, language, truth, fiction, consciousness - but always with his characteristic verve, insight and wit. These essays showcase Tallis's skill for getting to the heart of the matter and challenging us to see, and wonder, in different ways. Wonder is the proper state of humankind, and as these essays show it has no more forceful a champion than Raymond Tallis.
ISBN: 9781844655250
Publication Date: 2014-08-19
The Poetic Apriori: Philosophical Imagination in a Meaningful Universe
Theories about the nature and function of philosophical imagination depend on our understanding of what kind of universe we inhabit. Some theories are compelling if the universe is meaningful as a whole, but they make no sense if it is not. Raymond C. Barfield discusses conditions that would be necessary if the universe is meaningful as a whole, and then develops a theory of philosophical imagination in light of that starting place. The theory moves toward the conclusion that if the universe is meaningful as a whole, the concept of the analogia entis, the analogy of being, illuminates philosophical imagination in a way that changes our understanding of its function and potential, along with the value of its discoveries through the things it creates.
ISBN: 9783838273501
Publication Date: 2020-03-30
God and Philosophy
Long past the time when philosophers from different perspectives had joined the funeral procession that declared the death of God, a renewed interest has arisen in regard to the questions of God and religion in philosophy. This book brings some of these philosophical views together to present an overview of the philosophical scene in its dealings with religion, but also to move beyond the outsider's perspective. Reflecting on these philosophical interpretations from a fundamental theological perspective, the authors discover in what way these interpretations can challenge an understanding of today's faith.
ISBN: 9780754699620
Publication Date: 2010-12-28
The Middle Included
The Middle Included is a systematic exploration of the meanings of logos throughout Aristotle’s work. It claims that the basic meaning is “gathering," a relation that holds its terms together without isolating them or collapsing one to the other. This meaning also applies to logos in the sense of human language. Aristotle describes how some animals are capable of understanding non-firsthand experience without being able to relay it, while others relay it without understanding. Aygün argues that what distinguishes human language, for Aristotle, is its ability to both understand and relay firsthand and non-firsthand experiences. This ability is key to understanding the human condition: science, history, news media, propaganda, gossip, utopian fiction, and sophistry, as well as philosophy. Ömer Aygün finds Aristotle’s name for this peculiar but crucial human ability of “gathering" both experiences is logos, and this leads to a claim about the specificity of human rationality and language.
ISBN: 9780810134027
Publication Date: 2016-12-01
Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy
The state of nature, the origin of property, the origin of government, the primordial nature of inequality and war why do political philosophers talk so much about the Stone Age? Widerquist and McCall draw on archaeology and anthropology to show that much of what we think we know about human origins comes from philosophers imaginations.
ISBN: 9780748678679
Publication Date: 2017
Derrida after the End of Writing : Political Theology and New Materialism
This book offers a new materialist interpretation of Derrida's later work, including his engagements with religion and politics. It argues that there is a shift from a context or background motor scheme of writing to what Derrida calls the machinic, and Catherine Malabou calls plasticity.
ISBN: 9780823277865
Publication Date: 2017-11-07
The Political Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
This exciting new text presents the first overview of Jean Jacques Rousseau's work from a political science perspective. Was Rousseau--the great theorist of the French Revolution--really a conservative? This original study argues that the he was a constitutionalist much closer to Madison, Montesquieu, and Locke than to revolutionaries. Outlining his profound opposition to Godless materialism and revolutionary change, this book finds parallels between Rousseau and Burke, as well as showing how Rousseau developed the first modern theory of nationalism. The book presents an integrated political analysis of Rousseau's educational, ethical, religious and political writings, and will be essential reading for students of politics, philosophy and the history of ideas.
ISBN: 9781847790842
Publication Date: 2013-07-19
Daniel A. Reed Library • The State University of New York at Fredonia • 280 Central Ave., Fredonia, NY 14063 • 716-673-3184 • Fax: 716-673-3185 • reedref@fredonia.edu
FB: @ReedLibraryInsta: @SUNYFredLibrary X: @SUNYFredLibrary
Accessibility Statement: Reed Library is dedicated to making information accessible for everyone. If you notice an accessibility issue within this guide, please contact Katelynn Telford
Except where otherwise noted, this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.