"Most of us struggle with distraction every day: the familiar feeling that our attention is not quite where it should be.
But what is distraction?
In his lucid, timely book, Damon Young shows that distraction is more than too many stimuli, or too little attention. It is actually a matter of value – to be distracted is to be torn away from what is worthwhile in life. And for Young, what is most worthwhile is freedom: not simply rights or legal liberties, but the capacity to patiently, creatively craft one’s own life.
Exploring the lives of such luminaries as Henri Matisse, Karl Marx, Seneca and Henry James, Young exposes distraction in work, technology, art, politics and intimacy. With warmth and wit, he reveals what is most valuable, and what is best avoided, in the pursuit of a life of one’s own."
Distraction is published in Australia as Distraction: A Philosopher's Guide to Being Free (MUP, 2008); in the UK as Distraction (Acumen, 2010); in the US as Distraction (McGill-Queens, 2010); and Mexico as El Lado B de la Distraccion (Ediciones B Mexico, 2011).
To buy Distraction in your country, click on the cover on the sidebar to the right.
"The beginnings of philosophy were martial. Plato was a wrestler as a youth, and recommended grappling in his dialogues. If philosophy and the fighting arts have parted ways in the last two and a half thousand years, they still complement one another brilliantly.
Edited by Damon Young and Graham Priest, Martial Arts and Philosophy uses the martial arts as an introduction to important philosophical ideas, schools and debates, and uses philosophy to analyse the fighting arts.
Tackling philosophical topics like morality, the nature of knowledge and thought, and beauty, it is a lively, easy-to-read introduction to the life of the mind. But it also reveals some of the traditions, principles, blindspots and virtues of the martial arts.
Written by scholars with a background in the martial arts, the collection has essays from Karateka, Judoka, Aikidoka, Kung Fu adepts, mixed martial artists, boxers, fencers and even a Western swordsman in chainmail and armour.
For anyone who's ever philosophised with a hammerfist, or professed 'I fight therefore I am', this is for you."
Martial Arts and Philosophy: Beating and Nothingness is published internationally (Open Court, 2010).
To buy Beating and Nothingness, click on the cover in the sidebar to the right.
