Philosophy

  • Traditionalism

    £25.00

    Traditionalism is the shadowy philosophy that has influenced so much of the 20th century and beyond: from the far right to the environmental movement, from Alexander Dugin to Prince Charles. It is a new way of seeing the world: one that rejects modernity and instead turns to sacred truth, perennialism and tradition as its guide. This study peels back the curtain on Traditionalist philosophy and the thought of its proponents – René Guénon, Julius Evola and Frithjof Schuon – and their many and varied followers.

  • Monsters

    £20.00

    What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is history an excuse? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it? Claire Dederer explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to apprehend the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and her own behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the reader, to do the same.

  • The daily dad

    £16.99

    What does it mean to be a great father? And how do you become one? Parenting is a role filled with meaning and purpose, but every dad needs guidance: because fatherhood is not a one-off, it is something you do every day. Instead of a parenting book you read once as a sleep-deprived new parent, ‘The Daily Dad’ provides 366 accessible meditations on fatherhood, one for each day of the year.

  • The God desire

    £9.99

    From the bestselling author of Jews Don’t Count

  • Humanly possible

    £22.00

    The bestselling, prizewinning author of ‘How to Live’ and ‘At the Existentialist Café’ explores 700 years of writers, thinkers, scientists and artists, all trying to understand what it means to be truly human. It takes us on an irresistible journey, and joyfully celebrates open-mindedness, optimism, freedom and the power of the here and now – humanist values which have helped steer us through dark times in the past, and which are just as urgently needed in our world today.

  • The storyteller

    £10.99

    A beautiful collection of the legendary thinker’s short stories

  • How to think like a woman

    £16.99

    As a young woman growing up in a small, religious community, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: Who are we and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she discovered philosophy and fell in love with its rationality, its abstractions, its beauty. What Penaluna didn’t realize was that philosophy – at least the canon that’s taught in Western universities, as well as the culture that surrounds it – would slowly grind her down through its devaluation of women and their minds. ‘How to Think Like a Woman’ is a moving meditation on what philosophy could look like if women were treated equally.

  • A terribly serious adventure

    £20.00

    ‘A Terribly Serious Adventure’ traces the friendships and the rivalries, the shared preoccupations and the passionate disagreements of Oxford’s most brilliant thinkers. Far from being stuck in a world of tweed, pipes and public schools, the Oxford philosophers drew on their wartime lives as soldiers and spies, conscientious objectors and prisoners of war in creating their greatest works, works that are original in both thought and style, true masterpieces of British modernism. Nikhil Krishnan brings his knowledge and understanding of philosophy to bear on the lives and intellectual achievements of a large and lively cast of characters. Together, they stood for a compelling moral vision of philosophy that is still with us today.

  • Wolfish

    £16.99

    Wolves abound through cultural folklore and through literature – vilified and venerated in equal measure. In ‘Wolfish’, Erica Berry examines these depictions, alongside her own research of the wolf for nearly a decade, to get to the heart of what our stories about the wolf reveal about our relationships with one another and ourselves: What does it mean to want to embody the same creature from which you are supposed to be running? The wolf is so often depicted as the male predator, preying on the vulnerable girl/woman who strays from the path; the she-wolf meanwhile depicts women who sit outside the accepted boundaries of feminine behaviour. Berry openly recounts her own uncomfortable and sometimes frightening experiences as a woman to try to understand how we navigate our fears when threat can seem constant.

  • The creative act

    £27.00

    Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day and then ages out. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn’t, he has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output; it’s about your relationship to the world. ‘The Creative Act’ is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow.

  • Essentials

    £14.99

    ‘Essentials’ is a collection of his own best poems, each in their way about capturing the experience itself, whether that is in the daily shifts, the ever-turning seasons or the bigger cycle of gain and grief that are part of our journey through life. Each poem is accompanied by a short context on where and when it was written. Together they form an elegant testament to David Whyte’s most closely-held understanding – that human life cannot be apportioned out as one thing or another; rather, it is best seen as a living conversation, a way between and beyond, made beautiful by darkness as well as light, at its essence both deeply solitary and profoundly communal. This updated edition includes poems from his 2021 collection, ‘Still Possible’.

  • How to Be You

    £18.99

    ‘Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.’ So said Simone de Beauvoir, one of the world’s most influential philosophers, whose pioneering work asks how we can live our most fulfilling lives and be our most vibrant selves. But in the age of so-called authenticity, what does her philosophy offer us today? In this galvanising tour of her defiant strategies for living, we explore how de Beauvoir can teach us to free ourselves of fears and stereotypes and live in a way that is truly authentic to our desires and beliefs. At home, at work, in love, families and friendship, Skye Cleary shows us how de Beauvoir’s philosophy can help us become more attuned to living purposefully, thoughtfully, and with a little more rebellious spirit. An authentic life is the goal but, warning: happiness may be a side effect.

Nomad Books