Best known for the progressive school he founded in Dessau during the 18th century, Johann Bernhard Basedow was a central thinker in the German Enlightenment. Since his death in 1790 a substantial body of German-language literature about his life, work, and school (the Philanthropin) has developed. In the first English intellectual biography of this influential figure, Robert B. Louden answers questions that continue to surround Basedow and provides a much-needed examination of Basedow's intellectual legacy. Assessing the impact of his ideas and theories on subsequent educational movements, Louden argues that Basedow is the unacknowledged father of the progressive education movement. He unravels several paradoxes surrounding the Philanthropin to help understand why it was described by Immanuel Kant as "the greatest phenomenon which has appeared in this century for the perfection of humanity", despite its brief and stormy existence, its low enrollment and insufficient funding. Among the many neglected stories Louden tells is the enormous and unacknowledged debt that Kant owes to Basedow in his philosophy of education, history, and religion. This is a positive reassessment of Basedow and his difficult personality that leads to a reevaluation of the originality of major figures as well as a reconsideration of the significance of allegedly minor authors who have been eclipsed by the politics of historiography. For anyone looking to gain a deeper understanding of the history of German philosophy, Louden's book is essential reading.

The question of humanness requires a philosophical anthropology and we need a revision of what philosophical anthropology means in light of contemporary efforts in speculative realism and object-oriented ontology. This is the main claim of the book which expands into the smaller supporting claims that 1) contemporary work in speculative realism indicates that Heidegger's analytic of Dasein needs to be rethought in consideration of certain Kantian values 2) recent philosophical anthropology offers an incomplete look at the central concern of philosophical anthropology, namely, the question of humanness 3) current ontological models do not account adequately for humanness, because they do not begin with humanness. From these considerations, a new ontological model better suited to account for humanness is proposed, spectral ontology. Under spectral ontology, Being is treated as a spectrum consisting of beings, nonbeings, and hyperbeings. Nonbeings, or nonrelational entities, and hyper-beings, are spectral insofar as they are like a specter which haunts the being that manifests in the world. Thus, spectral in this sense refers to both the nonrelational status of nonbeings and to an ontology which reflects such a spectrum of Being.

Marx's early work is well known and widely available, but it usually interpreted as at best a kind of stepping-stone to the Marx of Capital. This book offers something completely different; it reconstructs, from his first writings spanning from 1835 to 1846, a coherent and well-rounded political philosophy. The influence of Engels upon the development of that philosophy is discussed. This, it is argued, was a philosophy that Marx could have presented had he put the ideas together, as he hinted was his eventual intention. Had he done so, this first Marx would have made an even greater contribution to social and political philosophy than is generally acknowledged today. Arguments regarding revolutionary change, contradiction and other topics such as production, alienation and emancipation contribute to a powerful analysis in the early works of Marx, one which is worthy of discussion on its own merits. This analysis is distributed among a range of books, papers, letters and other writings, and is gathered here for the first time. Marx's work of the period was driven by his commitment to emancipation. Moreover, as is discussed in the conclusion to this book, his emancipatory philosophy continues to have resonance today. This new book presents Marx in a unique, new light and will be indispensable reading for all studying and following his work.