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Philosophy

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  • We informeren ons kapot
    We informeren ons kapot
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    Informing Ourselves to Death

    In the midst of the information overload we need to develop a new attitude that requires a critical point of view that we have to keep on training to learn to ignore the information that does not deserve attention. Ignaas Devisch shows how such a well-balanced ignorance can reclaim a well-informed position in the world. It is high time to stop informing ourselves - and democracy - to death.

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  • Cover Know yourself
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    Know Yourself
    ‘Know Yourself’ is a work to cherish and to reread.
    Humanistisch Verbond

    The starting point for each of the pieces in this book is a philosophical question. They are not chosen at random but arise out of a desire for self-knowledge. With each question the author found that, after brief reflection, her first spontaneous answer proved inadequate. What she initially thought she knew turned out to be no longer valid.

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  • Cover Pride
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    Pride
    The questions Claeys raises are relevant, and she cleverly links the thinking of Martha Nussbaum and John Rawls to societal issues such as gender freedom, MeToo situations, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
    NRC Handelsblad

    Pride may seem like something for people with big egos, for individuals who are easily offended, and for braggarts who have no boundaries on social media. Those who are proud tend to put themselves too much in the spotlight.  

    But pride also underlies emancipation and can be a powerful weapon in protest. With pride, you can better appreciate your own worth. More space for certain forms of pride may be the key to social justice.  

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  • Cover Ik zal alles verdragen, ook mezelf
    Cover Ik zal alles verdragen, ook mezelf
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    I Will Endure Everything, Including Myself
    The diary of the ‘Flemish Sartre’, which after reading just one page is impossible to put down.
    NRC Handelsblad

    Leopold Flam (1912-1995) lived for the greater part of his childhood in a cellar in Antwerp. At the age of thirteen, Flam started keeping a diary that was as candid as it was grim. The fact that he managed to lift himself out of the extreme poverty of his early years rates as a minor miracle. The son of beggars eventually became a professor of philosophy. Leopold Flam published an impressive number of books and articles, but his diaries – which he kept all his life, literally until he was on his deathbed – are among his strongest work. Out of more than two million (!) words, Kristien Hemmerechts and Guido Van Wambeke have compiled a fascinating book.

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  • Des te erger voor de feiten
    Des te erger voor de feiten
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    So Much the Worse for the Facts
    Sharp as a knife.
    De Morgen

    German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once summed up his philosophical project with the words ‘So much the worse for the facts’. It was an audacious argument in favour of theory and against the journalistic concerns of the day. In his book of that name, Anton Jäger, an up-and-coming philosophy talent, collects five years’ worth of essays that take an approach based on political philosophy.

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  • Shifts
    Shifts
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    Displacements
    Erudite, adventurous, and lucid reflections on climate, democracy, identity, and more.
    De Morgen

    If there is one line that’s been reverberating in Stefan Hertmans’ mind for years, it’s a well-known quote from Victor Klemperer, which was written with a steady hand in his famous journals during the Nazi period, amid terror and uncertainty: ‘The contemporary witness knows nothing.’

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  • Hospitality
    Hospitality
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    Hospitality
    Peter Venmans continually succeeds in taking his readers with him in a way that is appealing and accessible.
    De Volkskrant

    Every day we are somebody’s guest or host. We travel abroad, visit friends, or welcome new staff to our organisation. Hospitality is omnipresent. At the same time, some say we are experiencing the end of hospitality. As a result of mass tourism, the rise of the hospitality industry, and the Covid-19 pandemic, the spontaneous cordiality of times past is said to have been replaced by commercial considerations, pragmatism, and prescribed codes of conduct.

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  • Listen
    Listen
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    Listen
    His new book ‘Listen’ cracks open your listening habits
    Knack Focus

    Did you ever listen to Hindustani Dhrupad music, a Gisalo from Papua New Guinea or the chants of the Blackfoot people? Does it mean anything to you to listen to a piece of music that lasts 639 years? Followed by the noise experiments of Maso Yamazaki? Or do you think that this is not music?

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  • Cooler Heads for a Warming Planet
    Cooler Heads for a Warming Planet
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    Cooler Heads for a Warming Planet

    In this provocative and wide-ranging book, philosopher of science Maarten Boudry explains how we can solve our current climate crisis, just as we warded off earlier potential environmental disasters.

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  • Cover of Machiavelli’s Audacity
    Cover of Machiavelli’s Audacity
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    Machiavelli’s Daring. Philosophy for Free People
    The Machiavelli Beeckman presents is a surprising and confrontational teacher.
    De Standaard

    Beeckman discusses Machiavelli’s original insights that are applicable today. In a challenging book, Beeckman leads the reader to the heart of Machiavelli’s thinking and shows that his works are a rich treasure trove of wise, sharp and clearly formulated insights.

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  • Cover 'Keep Your Distance, Touch Me'
    Cover 'Keep Your Distance, Touch Me'
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    Keep Your Distance, Touch Me
    A well-written and soundly reasoned essay
    DeWereldMorgen

    The problems caused by the corona and climate crises are forcing us all to adapt to a society which has changed beyond all recognition. But they can also be used as an opportunity to make different choices. Where would we like to take our economy? How should we relate to one another and to the environment? And what is the effect of this ‘new normal’ on our sense of wellbeing?

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  • Waarom de wereld niet naar de kinoppen gaat
    Waarom de wereld niet naar de kinoppen gaat
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    Why the World Isn’t Going to the Dogs
    Refreshing in a time of polarisation.
    Cutting Edge

    Having concluded that we’ve never lived so long, so prosperously and so peacefully, philosopher of science Maarten Boudry takes on those he calls doom-mongers and cultural pessimists. The world has never been in a better shape than today, and Maarten Boudry is convinced that the best is yet to come, if only we put our minds to it.

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  • Dames voor Darwin
    Dames voor Darwin
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    Women for Darwin
    A radical re-examination of sacred feminist cows
    Ignis

    Many psychological differences between the sexes are not solely the product of upbringing and the cultural environment. Instead they are in part a predictable consequence of millions of years of evolution by natural and sexual selection. This well-written book draws upon the most recent scientific developments as support for its plea to us to rethink our concept of feminism.

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  • Cover 'De kunst van het ongelukkig zijn'
    Cover 'De kunst van het ongelukkig zijn'
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    The Art of Being Unhappy
    Convincing and inspiring
    Psychologie Magazine

    Today’s society is all about more, better, further – about an obsessive individual pursuit of happiness and a stringing together of Instagram-worthy experiences. Dirk De Wachter appeals for more honest dealings with life’s ups and downs, for more real contact and sincere solidarity. This book invites us to think about what happiness can really mean.

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  • The Father and the Philosopher - cover
    The Father and the Philosopher - cover
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    The Father and the Philosopher. Saving the Husserl archives
    A story comparable to a novel by Umberto Eco or Dan Brown, except for the fact that it really happened
    De Volkskrant

    At first an exciting story about smuggling manuscripts set against the backdrop of the persecution of Jews before and during the Second World War, this book indirectly develops into a history of European philosophy in the twentieth century.

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  • Sound
    Sound
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    Sound
    A passionate account about the intangible of music
    Mauro Pawlowski, musician

    Music is able to move people, to ease their pain, or simply to make them want to dance. But what do we experience exactly listening to Chopin, Pink Floyd or Bob Dylan? Which features characterize our musical experience?

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  • Cover Philosophy of Violence
    Cover Philosophy of Violence
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    Philosophy of Violence
    Giving new contextual dimensions to a word that is increasingly being used with the exclusive definition of ‘causing harm to others’
    Cutting Edge

    We usually think of violence in black and white terms: it is good or bad. Philosophers are expected to provide arguments in support of that perspective. Lode Lauwaert however, believes that such a reductionist view of the world cannot adequately answer complex questions. His ‘Philosophy of Violence’ is an erudite, rich and varied book that encourages the reader to think differently about violence. 

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  • Cover Why Everyone is Always Right
    Cover Why Everyone is Always Right
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    Why Everyone is Always Right
    ‘I finally understand why my opponents find it so hard to admit that they are wrong’
    Stand-up comedian Wouter Deprez

    Why do we so often see two camps emerge that are both convinced they have a monopoly on wisdom? Why do we so love to dig ourselves into the trenches of our own rightness? ‘Why Everyone is Always Right’ is the ideal book to give us more insight into the eccentricities of the human spirit.

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    Bloodrush
    An original and refreshing study that does not shrink from taking the shine off some well-worn symbolism.
    IFILOSOFIE

    In this well-documented narrative account, with reference to personal experiences, religious traditions, Western literature and philosophy, cultural, technological and scientific developments, Jan Verplaetse looks for answers to the question of why blood fascinates us, yet instils revulsion in us at the same time.

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  • Cover Restlessness
    Cover Restlessness
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    Restlessness
    Devisch extends to us something we can grasp in order to pull ourselves out of the morass.
    Knack

    Anyone who thinks restlessness is a phenomenon specific to our own times is mistaken. For centuries people have sought a solution to a problem of which they themselves are the cause: an excessively full life. But is restlessness really a problem or one of our primary motivations?

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  • Cover Seeking Untruth
    Cover Seeking Untruth
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    Seeking Untruth
    Does anyone seriously think 'theology' is a real subject? See Maarten Boudry’s wonderfully scathing Sokal-style hoax.
    Richard Dawkins

    Can we survive without illusions? Sure, nobody wants to live in a fiction, but truth can be hurtful or unsettling. Then is it not allowed to bend the truth a little once in a while? Maarten Boudry will have none of it.

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  • Cover Dubious Matters
    Cover Dubious Matters
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    Dubious Matters
    Cultural products marked as obscene always also make food for thought
    Rudi Laermans

    The obscene in this book refers to more than only the sexually offensive: the forbidden generates fear and contains a mixture of fear and lust.

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  • Cover Authority
    Cover Authority
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    Authority
    His argument for a collective authority is inspired and well-founded, but also provocative and utopian.
    Humo

    Verhaeghe seeks and finds a new interpretation in groups, which lend authority to an individual or an institution, whether they be parents’ associations, groups of active citizens or shareholders’ meetings.

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  • Cover Love: An Impossible Longing?
    Illustrated in colour
    Cover Love: An Impossible Longing?
    Illustrated in colour
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    Love: An Impossible Longing?
    We live in the illusion we can buy anything. Also love.
    Dirk De Wachter

    'Love: An Impossible Longing?' is a plea to take love as it comes and behave naturally. Only then, by not forcing something, love can appear gloriously.

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  • Cover A Paradise Blown Out of the Storm
    Cover A Paradise Blown Out of the Storm
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    A Paradise Blown Out of the Storm
    Decreus’ critical discussion of dominant market thinking in our depoliticized society is clever and provocative.
    Politiek en Samenleving

    Decreus sets out to subject the current political establishment to fierce criticism. He unmasks representative democracy as in truth an aristocracy and points to the incompatibility of the democratic ideal with the premises of neoliberal policies and market thinking.

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  • Cover Against Elections
    Cover Against Elections
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    Against Elections
    Van Reybrouck manages to convince the reader that drawing lots would be an effective way to breathe new life into our enfeebled democracy.
    Henriette Roland-Holst Prize jury

    Van Reybrouck argues with crystal clarity that drawing lots would be an effective way to revitalize our enfeebled democracy and ensure that citizens participate once more in the social structures that shape them and their lives.

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  • Cover The Naked Peartree
    Cover The Naked Peartree
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    The Naked Peartree
    This book lifts Rotthier into the upper echelons of our authors.
    Humo

    Rotthier visits every place in which Spinoza lived and examines the impact on the present-day Netherlands of his vision of a rational society.

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  • Cover Identity
    Cover Identity
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    Identity
    His argument is lucid, eloquent and compelling, and easy to follow, even for laypersons.
    Athenaeum Bookstore

    Based on his clinical experience as a psychotherapist, Verhaeghe shows how our changing society works through into the psychological problems that afflict individuals today.

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  • Cover Borderline Times
    Cover Borderline Times
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    Borderline Times
    An eye-opener for everyone who thinks he/she is normal and that only others suffer psychologically.
    Yves Desmet

    In 'Borderline Times' Dirk De Wachter describes how the nine symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are present in all of us. His diagnosis upon observing our society is: ‘borderline’.

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  • Cover Love in a Time of Loneliness
    Cover Love in a Time of Loneliness
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    Love in a Time of Loneliness
    The book is both entertaining and intellectually challenging.
    Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies

    Verhaeghe looks into the differences between male and female sexual fantasies and recasts the Freudian anti­thesis, Eros and Thanatos, as a contrast between two different forms of sexual pleasure.

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  • Cover The Mobilization of Arcadia
    Cover The Mobilization of Arcadia
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    The Mobilization of Arcadia
    A thoroughly impressive book.
    De Groene Amsterdammer

    The theme that unites all the essays in ‘The Mobilization of Arcadia’ is our romantic and Christian longing for Arcadia, an imaginary place that acquired a new meaning with the arrival of modernity.

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  • Cover The End of Psychotherapy
    Cover The End of Psychotherapy
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    The End of Psychotherapy
    Heartfelt, provocative and controversial
    HP/De Tijd

    Are we experiencing the dying throes of psychotherapy? Is Freud finished for good? Following a line of reasoning as subtle as it is logically necessary, Paul Verhaeghe shows how psychotherapy and the psychiatric profession have lost ground due to the combined effect of pseudo-scientific psychology and the corruptive influence of the pharmaceutical industry.

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  • Cover A Longing for Inconsolability
    Cover A Longing for Inconsolability
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    A Longing for Inconsolability
    She is the only philosopher writing in Dutch who can make philosophy not just nonacademic and understandable but moving.
    Herman De Coninck

    The great value of Patricia De Martelaere's essays ultimately lies in what makes them rise above philosophical debate. Whereas philosophers like to make readers furrow their brows as deeply as possible, the author excels at laying out a clear line of argument, avoiding jargon and applying convincing logic.

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