Ansel Adams

Robert Baker

Discusses the Zone System, the operation of darkroom equipment, and the effects of light, exposure, and type of film on the developing of photographs

The Negative

The noted photographer provides detailed descriptions of the basic equipment of photography, discussing the major camera formats, and of the techniques for using that equipment creatively

The Camera

A theoretical account of moral revolutions, illustrated by historical cases that include the criminalization and decriminalization of abortion and the patient rebellion against medical paternalism. We live in an age of moral revolutions in which the once morally outrageous has become morally acceptable, and the formerly acceptable is now regarded as reprehensible. Attitudes toward same-sex love, for example, and the proper role of women, have undergone paradigm shifts over the last several decades. In this book, Robert Baker argues that these inversions are the product of moral revolutions that follow a pattern similar to that of the scientific revolutions analyzed by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. After laying out the theoretical terrain, Baker develops his argument with examples of moral reversals from the recent and distant past. He describes the revolution, led by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, that transformed the postmortem dissection of human bodies from punitive desecration to civic virtue; the criminalization of abortion in the nineteenth century and its decriminalization in the twentieth century; and the invention of a new bioethics paradigm in the 1970s and 1980s, supporting a patient-led rebellion against medical paternalism. Finally, Baker reflects on moral relativism, arguing that the acceptance of “absolute” moral truths denies us the diversity of moral perspectives that permit us to alter our morality in response to changing environments.

Studies of Changes in the Morality of Abortion, Death, and the Bioethics Revolution

The Structure of Moral Revolutions

Polaroid Land Photography

In The Extravagant Robert Baker explores the interplay between poetry and philosophy in the modern period, engaging a broad range of writers: Kant, Wordsworth, and Lyotard in a chapter on the sublime; Rimbaud, Nietzsche, and Bataille in a chapter on visionary quest; and Kierkegaard, Dickinson, Mallarmé, and Derrida in a chapter on apocalyptic negativity. His guiding concern is to illuminate adventures of "extravagant" or "wandering" language that, from the romantic period on, both poets and philosophers have undertaken in opposition to the dominant social and discursive frames of a pervasively instrumentalized world. The larger interpretative narrative shaping the book is that a dialectic of instrumental reason and creative negativity has been at work throughout modern culture. Baker argues that adventures of exploratory wandering emerge in the romantic period as displaced articulations of older religious discourses. Given the dominant trends of the modern world, however, these adventures repeatedly lead to severe collisions and crises, in response to which they are later revised or further displaced. Over time, as instrumental structures come to disfigure every realm of modern life, poetries and philosophies at odds with these structures are forced to criticize and surpass earlier voices in their traditions that seem to have lost a transformative power. Thus, Baker argues, these adventures gradually unfold into various discourses of the negative prominent in contemporary culture: discourses of decentering, dispersing, undoing, and erring. It is this dialectic that Baker traces and interprets in this ambitious study.

Crossings of Modern Poetry and Modern Philosophy

The Extravagant

Frederick Elliston

Kathleen J. Wininger

This classic sourcebook, which has for two decades helped thousands rethink their views of ethics and human sexuality, is all new and totally revised for the challenges of a new century. Featuring essays on adultery, monogamy, perversion, homosexuality, pederasty, sex without love, sexual equality and more, Philosophy and Sex retains its uniqueness and accessibility without compromising quality and versatility. Though the book is completely reconceptualized, the editors have retained the best of the existing volume (essays by Shulamith Firestone, Judith Jarvis Thomson, and others) while offering many new selections, including Michel Foucault, postmodern feminists, recent work on same-sex marriage, nonconsensual sex (date rape), and much more.

Philosophy and Sex

The first history of American medical ethics published in more than a half century, Before Bioethics tracks the evolution of American medical ethics from colonial midwives and physicians' oaths to current bioethical controversies over abortion, AIDS, animal rights, and physician-assisted suicide.

A History of American Medical Ethics from the Colonial Period to the Bioethics Revolution

Before Bioethics

Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown

Peter Mazar

Evelyn Kaehler

The Sourcebook series of anthologies gathers prose and poetry, hymns and prayers from various times and traditions, all centered on a particular theme, from the seasons of the church year to the foundational moments in the life of a Christian. Each collection offers a treasury of wisdom for use in homilies, prayer services and personal meditation.

Robert Baker

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