Guiding users through the wealth of content available on Bloomsbury Philosophy Library, our exclusive and specially-commissioned research and learning tools are designed with teachers, students, and researchers in mind.
Bibliographic Guides
Thematic bibliographic guides provide an introductory overview of key thinkers to a particular topic, comprising content from both within and beyond the resource.
Critical Phenomenology
by Megan Burke
As a philosophical method, phenomenology is the study of the appearance of things, an investigation into the way things appear in first-person experience. As a practice of reflection, phenomenology aims to understand and describe the constitutive structures of lived experience. The famous dictum of phenomenology, “back to the things themselves,” is thus a call to critically encounter and understand the meanings and possibilities disclosed in conscious experience.
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Islamic Philosophy: An Introduction
by Oliver Leaman
Philosophy flourished in the Islamic world for many centuries, and continues to be a significant feature of cultural life today. Indeed, the compilation of biographical dictionaries has long been a tradition within Islamic culture. The issue of the definition of Islamic philosophy has been controversial, and it probably should be classified as an essentially contested concept. There is nothing specifically Islamic about this issue, it occurs in all systems of philosophy which are classified under the label of a particular religion.
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Idealism and Realism in German Philosophy
by Christopher Adair-Toteff
It is almost impossible to distill four centuries of German philosophy into a few pages, but one way to approach this problem is to consider that there have been two forces that have tended to dominate German philosophical thought—realism and idealism. Stated crudely, realism emphasizes the objective and the empirical world; idealism stresses the subjective and the thinking mind.
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General Editor’s Introduction to Bloomsbury Contemporary Aesthetics Case Studies: Failing the Warehouse Test
by Darren Hudson Hick
The philosophy of art and aesthetics are all about cases. Cases raise philosophical questions, and test philosophical claims. Cases open doors. The cases in this growing collection have been designed to create wedges into both traditional and hot contemporary topics, to introduce some of the key questions and figures in aesthetics, and to provoke you to raise questions of your own.
The 39 authors who have contributed have produced a tremendous resource for both teachers and students alike. They write about painting, sculpture, films, art installations, nature, food, theatre, novels, itches, manhole covers, and beards. The sheer diversity of their cases and approaches to writing them does a wonderful job of representing the broad scope of people and ideas that make up this exciting field. There is something here for everyone.
Read the General Editor's guide and explore the case studies by theme
Bloomsbury Contemporary Aesthetics: Reading Transcultural Aesthetics through Images
by Paul Gladston
This selection of 50 images, drawn from the Bloomsbury Contemporary Aesthetics image gallery, brings together objects, things and places from widely differing cultural contexts, including across Asia, the Middle East, Australasia and Africa as well as Europe and the US. Images are accompanied by observations and questions and are grouped into eight sections: ‘Gardens’, ‘Food’, ‘Bodies’, ‘Land/Country’, ‘Clothes’, ‘Sites of Ritual/Display’, ‘Precious Objects’ and ‘Buildings’.
Each section includes images representing things that are broadly similar in their uses and functions, but whose cultural meanings and aesthetic qualities often differ markedly. By encouraging connections within and between sections, this guides offers an opportunity to critically reflect on the interrelatedness of aesthetic affects and artistic principles, and how they relate to authority and injustice.
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Subject Guides
Our goal is to provide solutions to support digital learning, teaching, and research across a variety of disciplines. Subject Guides provide instructors, students, and librarians with a simple shortcut to help them find the material they need across a number of topics. Links can easily be added to a course syllabus or reading list. Explore these gateways for discovery and deepen the research experience with our resources.
Download PDF versions of the Subject Guides by clicking on the links below.
Guide to Islamic Philosophers
The list below covers our entries on the major and many minor philosophers, theologians, and mystics who contributed to the development of philosophy in the Islamic world. They cover 1400 years of Islamic philosophical tradition, with entries ranging from the early years of the faith to the modern period and every major school of thought, from classical Peripatetic philosophy to Sufi mysticism.
Download the Guide to Islamic Philosophers [PDF]
Teaching Guides
These articles offer practical advice on how to incorporate diverse texts into teaching and can be used both alongside and outside of content on the Bloomsbury Philosophy Library.
by Luvell Anderson and Verena Erlenbusch
The approach we take when diversifying our syllabi might depend on how we understand the nature of the problem. In this guide, Luvell Anderson and Verena Erlenbusch (Memphis) discuss four ways to approach the diversity problem as a conceptual problem, all of which might be useful in appropriate circumstances.
Read full guideby Katharine Jenkins and Jennifer Saul
Incorporating texts by authors from under-represented groups can be tricky. It is vital that the syllabus makes the authors' backgrounds salient to the students - after all, challenging the stereotype can only happen if the students are aware that the authors they read are not stereotypical. But how conspicuous should one be about including diverse materials?
Read full guideby Ian James Kidd
In diversifying our curricula, we need to be cautious: mistakes can not only thwart our efforts, but also confirm the worries of sceptics and support their resistance. Ian James Kidd (Nottingham) outlines two difficulties to take into account.
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Podcast: Becoming Beauvoir with Kate Kirkpatrick
by Bloomsbury Academic Podcast and Kate Kirkpatrick
Simone de Beauvoir was an existentialist philosopher who laid the foundation for the modern feminist movement. We sat down to talk to author Kate Kirkpatrick about everything Beauvoir, from her childhood, to her personal relationships, to her commitment to social justice movements such as the decolonization of Algeria. This episode is for anyone interested in discussing Beauvoir’s social ideals and discovering how they remain relevant today.
