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Showing 1 - 20 of 40402 items
By Null Andrew Brenner. 2024
What are we? Are we, for example, souls, organisms, brains, or something else? In this book, Andrew Brenner argues that…
there are principled obstacles to our discovering the answer to this fundamental metaphysical question. The main competing accounts of personal ontology hold that we are either souls (or composites of soul and body), or we are composite physical objects of some sort, but, as Brenner shows, arguments for either of these options can be parodied and transformed into their opposites. Brenner also examines arguments for and against the existence of the self, offers a detailed discussion of the metaphysics of several afterlife scenarios - resurrection, reincarnation, and mind uploading -- and considers whether agnosticism with respect to personal ontology should lead us to agnosticism with respect to the possibility of life after death.By Soran Reader, Gillian Brock. 2024
Appeals to need abound in everyday discussion. People make claims about their own needs all the time, and they do…
so in a way that suggests these should have a certain moral force. Needs also play an important role in contemporary popular discourse about social justice, climate change, obligations to future generations, dealing fairly with refugees, treating animals humanely, and critiques of consumerist lifestyles – to name just a few of the many examples. The idea of need is present in an increasing number of debates and domains. There is interest in need from several disciplines, not just philosophy, which also include psychology, economics, political science, social work and sociology. This volume, then, offers a fine introduction to an increasingly important concept in day-to-day life. In a new Foreword, Gillian Brock discusses the continuing significance of several innovative chapters in the book, indicating how they presaged new directions in philosophical conversation.By Frans Svensson. 2024
This book offers a novel and comprehensive interpretation of Descartes’s moral philosophy. In contrast to other influential interpretations, the book…
argues that the central tenet of his ethical thought is that each person ought to live in the way that is most conducive to their degree of overall perfection.While Descartes’s ethical thought has attracted only a very modest amount of attention among scholars, this book demonstrates that it constitutes an important and integral component of his philosophical project as a whole. It argues that Descartes’s ethics constitutes a form of moral perfectionism. In the Cartesian picture, we satisfy this requirement of perfection by using our free will well in all our conduct, something which is also necessary for obtaining happiness for ourselves. To be guaranteed happiness, however, we need to acquire the virtue of generosity, which, besides a habit of using one’s free will well, entails a habit of being attentive in one’s thought to various truths about oneself and about the world we live in. Descartes offers an interesting attempt to make living well depend entirely on ourselves and not on fate or fortune. He also leaves room for the presence of passions within such a life and for acknowledging that even fully virtuous persons’ lives may differ in their degrees of overall perfection.Descartes’s Moral Perfectionism will appeal to scholars and graduate students working on Descartes, the history of early modern philosophy, and the history of ethics.By Sally Anne Corcoran. 2024
This book investigates to what extent UNSCR 1325/WPS agenda has functioned in practice, to advance women’s equality and empowerment in…
the peacekeeping context and beyond.The book examines whether widespread implementation of UNSCR 1325 and the broader WPS agenda via gender mainstreaming in UN operations has translated into increased gender equality in peacekeeping operations, the broader UN institutional context and, by extension, the host countries in which missions are situated, via norm dissemination. The book investigates this via a review of the implementation of UNSCR1325 in the operations chosen as research sites over three snapshot years. The book undertakes a comparative analysis that scrutinizes if, how and under what conditions gender mainstreaming has succeeded as a strategy to advance gender equality by analyzing the factors/conditions that have led to successful gender mainstreaming across the operational context, and those that have impeded this outcome. The book concludes that, despite rhetorical commitments to women’s equality in peacekeeping since the passage of UNSCR 1325, progress on the ground has remained minimal, and that the operational environment continues to be discriminatory against women. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, women do not participate as equal partners in peacekeeping and continue to have less access to resources and decision-making power, overall. The book interrogates that by exploring the spaces available within law, policy and practice of the UN to pursue the human rights agenda of gender equality and considers whether UNSCR 1325 has enlarged those spaces. It also points to the irony of internal UN structures failing to adequately adapt to their own gender mainstreaming mandates, while those same structures have delivered some gender equality mandates successes externally, at local levels.This book will be of interest to students of peacekeeping, gender studies, and International Relations.By Melanie Altanian. 2024
The injustice of genocide denial is commonly understood as a violation of the dignity of victims, survivors, and their descendants,…
and further described as an assault on truth and memory. This book rethinks the normative relationship between dignity, truth, and memory in relation to genocide denial by adopting the framework of epistemic injustice.This framework performs two functions. First, it introduces constructive normative vocabulary into genocide scholarship through which we can gain a better understanding of the normative impacts of genocide denial when it is institutionalized and systematic. Second, it develops and enriches current scholarship on epistemic injustice with a further, underexplored case study. Genocide denialism is relevant for political and social epistemology, as it presents a substantive epistemic practice that distorts normativity and social reality in ways that maintain domination. This generates pervasive ignorance that makes denial rather than recognition of genocide appear as the morally and epistemically right thing to do. By focusing on the prominent case of Turkey’s denialism of the Armenian genocide, the book shows the serious consequences of this kind of epistemic injustice for the victim group and society as a whole.The Epistemic Injustice of Genocide Denialism will appeal to students and scholars working in social, political, and applied epistemology, social and political philosophy, genocide studies, Armenian studies, and memory studies.Why have so many people responded to the insecurity, exploitation, alienation, and isolation of precarity capitalism by supporting the far…
right? In this timely book, Claudia Leeb argues that psychoanalytic and feminist critical theory illuminates how economic and psychological factors interact to produce this extreme political shift.Contesting the Far Right examines right-wing recruitment tactics in the United States and Austria, where people discontented with the status quo have turned to far-right parties and movements that further cement capitalism’s adverse effects. Leeb contends that Freudian psychoanalytic theory and early Frankfurt School Critical Theory provide analytical tools to explain this apparent contradiction in psychological terms. Living under precarity capitalism generates feelings of failure and anxiety, which people experience as non-wholeness, because it has become difficult if not impossible to live up to the fetish of economic, interpersonal, and bodily success, and the far right preys on such feelings. Its psychologically oriented propaganda tactics produce the illusion of wholeness and a positive sense of self while leaving the socioeconomic conditions that cause people’s suffering intact. At the same time, they remove the inhibitions that keep people’s repressed aggression and racist and sexist attitudes in check. To demonstrate the workings of this process, Leeb compares cases including Trump and the alt-right in the United States and the Freedom Party and the identitarian movement in Austria. At once theoretically rich and politically engaged, this book also offers ways to resist the far right and counter the psychological appeal of its propaganda techniques.By Anthony Bale. 2023
A captivating journey of the expansive world of medieval travel, from London to Constantinople to the court of China and…
beyond. Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings, as they moved through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and beguiling encounters. In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites readers on an odyssey across the medieval world, recounting the advice that circulated among those venturing to the road for pilgrimage, trade, diplomacy, and war. Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens. He takes us from the streets of Rome, more ruin than tourist spot, and tours of the Khan’s court in Beijing to Mamluk-controlled Jerusalem, where we ride asses across the holy terrain, and bustling bazaars of Tabriz. We also learn of rumored fantastical places, like ones where lambs grow on trees and giant canes grow fruit made of gems. And we are offered a glimpse of what non-European travelers thought of the West on their own travels. Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from a colorful range of travelers, and from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, North Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is a witty and unforgettable exploration of how Europeans understood—and often misunderstood—the larger world.By Richard Sennett. 2024
An acclaimed sociologist&’s exploration of the connections among performances in life, art, and politics In The Performer, Richard Sennett…
explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics, and everyday experience. It focuses on the bodily and physical dimensions of performing, rather than on words. Sennett is particularly attuned to the ways in which the rituals of ordinary life are performances. The book draws on history and sociology, and more personally on the author&’s early career as a professional cellist, as well as on his later work as a city planner and social thinker. It traces the evolution of performing spaces in the city; the emergence of actors, musicians, and dancers as independent artists; the inequality between performer and spectator; the uneasy relations between artistic creation and social and religious ritual; the uses and abuses of acting by politicians. The Janus-faced art of performing is both destructive and civilizing.By David Grčki, Rafe McGregor. 2024
Standing at the intersection of criminology and philosophy, this book demonstrates the ways in which mythic movies and television series…
can provide an understanding of actual crimes and social harms.Taking three social problems as its subjects – capitalist political economy, structural injustice, and racism – the book explores the ways in which David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011–2019), and Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) offer solutions by reconceiving justice in terms of personal and collective transformation, utopian thinking, and the relationship between racism and elitism, respectively. In doing so, the authors set out a theory of understanding the world based on cinematic and televisual works of art and conclude with a template that establishes a methodology for future use.An Epistemology of Criminological Cinema is authoritative and accessible, ideal reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, criminologists, philosophers, and film, television, and literary critics with an interest in social justice and social harm.By Norbert Hermann Hinterberger. 2023
The celebrated remembrances of the man who led the Union to victory during the Civil WarCompleted just days before his…
death, Grant&’s Personal Memoirs is a clear and compelling account of his military career, focusing on two great conflicts: the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. Lauded for its crisp and direct prose, Grant&’s autobiography offers frank insight into everything from the merits of the war with Mexico to the strategies and tactics employed by Union forces against the Confederacy to the poignancy of Grant&’s meeting with General Lee at Appomattox Court House.Beloved and bestselling since its publication in 1885, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant is a seminal work of military history and one of the great achievements of American autobiography.This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.By A. C. Grayling. 2023
'Grayling brings satisfying order to daunting subjects' Steven Pinker'An enthusiastic thinker who embraces humour, common sense and lucidity' Independent_______________From the…
eminent philosopher, an authoritative exploration of the great questions of how to live'There is a question everyone has to ask and answer - in fact, has to keep on asking and keep on answering. It is, 'How should I live my life?' meaning, 'What values shall I live by? 'What sort of person should I be? What shall I aim for?' The great majority of people do not ask this question, they merely answer it unthinkingly, by adopting conventional views of life and what matters in it...'From Stoics to existentialists, in philosophy and literature, discussion of the philosophy of life -- of love and death, of courage, fortitude and wisdom -- challenges us all to think about what kinds of life are truly worth living. In this summation of a lifetime thinking and writing about this great question, A. C. Grayling explores with clarity and depth the ideas that each of us must use in answering it for ourselves.Drawing on the lives, experiences and works of a fantastically eclectic range of thinkers -- taking in not only philosophers such as Confucius, Seneca and Nietzsche, but also authors from Shakespeare to Ursula LeGuin, and modern thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum and Bernard Williams - Philosophy and Life brings together wisdom from across eras and continents in a tour de force on the philosophy of being human in a complicated world.By Aditya Sudarshan. 2024
A near future apocalyptic vision of the everyday in Mumbai, India featuring the threat of personal technology in a world…
of confusing religious motivations.Idolatry, set in Mumbai in the near future, is about a novel technology, Shrine Tech, which enables everyone to worship a god of their own preference. The story follows a disaffected young actor, who is hired as a marketing rep by the company that owns the Tech. It is run by a man calling himself Mister Happy Maker. Soon, the young actor is plunged into the crucible of a society altering in strange and insane ways, in which ordinary individuals (a building society secretary, an indie film-maker, an aged priest, among others) are living their dreams, nightmarishly. Featuring cover art by Broci.FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing Independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to full-length original fiction in the horror and suspense, science fiction & fantasy, and crime / mystery / thriller categories. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices. Learn more about Flame Tree Press at www.flametreepress.com and connect on social media @FlameTreePress.By Julian Stockwin. 2009
Lt Cdr Julian Stockwin shares his love and knowledge of the sea in this entertaining collection of maritime stories and…
little-known trivia. Featuring nautical facts and feats, including superstitions at sea, the history of animals on the waves - until 1975 when all animals were banned from Royal Navy ships - and how the inventor of the umbrella helped man the British Navy, it is packed with informative tales. Focusing on the glory days of tall ships he explores marine myths and unearths the truth behind commonly held beliefs about the sea, such as whether Lord Nelson's body was really pickled in rum to transport it back to England after his death at Trafalgar. Interspersed throughout are salty sayings showing the modern words and phrases that originate from the mariners of old - 'cut of his jib', 'high and dry', 'the coast is clear', 'first rate' and 'slush fund'. Accompanied by nostalgic black and white line drawings Stockwin's Maritime Miscellany is a charming giftbook guaranteed to appeal to the sailing enthusiast, but also amuse and inform even the staunchest landlubber.By Will Hutton. 1995
The number one bestseller on the hardback list for more than six months, The State We're In is the most…
explosive analysis of British society to have been published for over thirty years. It is now updated for the paperback edition.By Steven McLaughlin. 2006
From the harsh realities of basic training to post-war chaos in Iraq and knife-edge tension in Northern Ireland, Squaddie takes…
us to a place not advertised in army recruitment brochures. It exposes the grim reality of everyday soldiering for the 'grunts on the ground'.After the tragic death of his brother, and in the dark days following 9/11, McLaughlin felt compelled to fulfil his lifelong ambition to serve in the army. He followed his late brother into the elite Royal Green Jackets and passed the arduous Combat Infantryman's Course at the age of 31. Thereafter, McLaughlin found himself submerged in a world of casual violence.Squaddie is a snapshot of infantry soldiering in the twenty-first century. It takes us into the heart of an ancient institution that is struggling to retain its tough traditions in a rapidly changing world. All of the fears and anxieties that the modern soldier carries as his burden are laid bare, as well as the occasional joys and triumphs that can make him feel like he is doing the best job in the world.This is an account of army life by someone who has been there and done it.By Tim Peake. 2020
From bestselling author and British astronaut Tim Peake, an inspirational human history of space travel, from the Apollo missions to…
our future forays to Mars. The Right Stuff for a new generation.'This book is brilliant - once in a blue moon. A book for the whole family.' Chris Evans, Virgin Radio'The most wonderful book ... Tim Peake is a historian and encyclopaedia of space.’ Rory Stewart'An extraordinary book. For anyone - even if you’re not interested in Space. If you’re interested in human stories and the human character - this is delightful.' BBC Breakfast'A fascinating, detailed, playful book drawn from extensive research – Peake met seven Apollo astronauts, Russian cosmonauts and various other space technicians – as well as his considerable personal experience. Lifts the lid on what space is like: the dedication and sacrifice; the politics and pantomime; the practicalities and the peril; the glory and fame; the adjustment back to normal life.' iPaper'A thrilling human history of space' Daily Mirror'The bible of space travel' Chris Moyles, Radio XAs seen in the major TV series Secrets of Our Universe with Tim Peake.Only 628 people in human history have left Earth. This is their story.Astronaut Tim Peake traces the lives of the remarkable men and women who have forged the way for humanity beyond Earth, from Yuri Gagarin to Neil Armstrong, from Valentina Tereshkova to Peggy Whitson.Full of fascinating insight into our greatest pioneers and unsung heroes, and astonishing detail only an astronaut would know, Peake's book is the first of its kind to chronicle the human evolution of space exploration over sixty years, from our first forays to now. In the process, Peake reveals what spaceflight is really like: the wondrous view of Earth, the surreal weightlessness, the extraordinary danger, the surprising humdrum, the unexpected humour, the new-found perspective, the years of training, the psychological pressures, the gruelling physical toll, the thrill of launch and the trepidation of re-entry.In the next few years, NASA will send the first woman and the first person of colour to step on the lunar surface. What will separate these upcoming moonwalkers from the legendary Apollo crews? Does it still take a derring-do attitude, super-human fitness, intelligence, plus 'the right stuff' - a fabled grace under pressure? And how will astronauts travel even further - to Mars and beyond?Space: The Human Story reveals all.'Space enthusiasts will snap up Peake’s compelling book in their droves, but his account of courage, camaraderie and the determination to go where few have gone before deserves to be read by a much wider audience too' – Daily ExpressBy Oscar Wilde. 2001
Selection includes The Portrait of Mr W.H., Wilde's defence of Dorian Gray, reviews, and the writings from 'Intentions' (1891): 'The…
Decay of Lying, 'Pen, Pencil, Poison', and 'The Critic as Artist'.Wilde is familiar to us as the ironic critic behind the social comedies, as the creator of the beautiful and doomed Dorian Gray, as the flamboyant aesthete and the demonised homosexual. This volume presents us with a different Wilde. Wilde emerges here as a deep and serious reader of literature and philosophy, and an eloquent and original thinker about society and art.By Ann Wroe. 2015
'She's a genius, I believe, because she lights up every subject she touches.' Hilary Mantel A Spectator Book of the…
YearGoethe claimed to know what light was. Galileo and Einstein both confessed they didn't. On the essential nature of light, and how it operates, the scientific jury is still out. There is still time, therefore, to listen to painters and poets on the subject. They, after all, spend their lives pursuing light and trying to tie it down.Six Facets of Light is a series of meditations on this most elusive and alluring feature of human life. Set mostly on the Downs and coastline of East Sussex, the most luminous part of England, it interweaves a walker's experiences of light in Nature with the observations, jottings and thoughts of a dozen writers and painters - and some scientists - who have wrestled to define and understand light. From Hopkins to Turner, Coleridge to Whitman, Fra Angelico to Newton, Ravilious to Dante, the mystery of light is teased out and pondered on. Some of the results are surprising.By using mostly notebooks and sketchbooks, this book becomes a portrait of the transitoriness, randomness, swiftness, frustrations and quicksilver beauty that are the essence of light. It is a work to be enjoyed, pondered over, engaged with, provoked by; to be packed in the rucksack of every walker heading for the sea or the hills, or to be opened to bring that outside radiance within four dark town walls.Lifescapes by Ann Wroe is coming in August 2023.By Mike Rossiter. 2007
On the evening of 30 March, 1982, Commander David Hall, chief engineer of the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror received…
a telephone call giving him the order to 'store for war'. At first he didn't believe it. In the early hours of 2 April, Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Isles.The sinking of the Belgrano was one of the most dramatic moments of the Falklands conflict. For many it signalled Britain's entry into the war and it has been seen as a politically motivated decision deliberately designed to take the country irrevocably into the fight. Now Mike Rossiter - with unprecedented access to sailors from the Belgrano and HMS Conqueror - gives us a dramatic and definitive retelling of the events that led up to the sinking.With all the pace and tension of a thriller, Sink the Belgrano takes us inside the battle for the South Atlantic and shows us the human drama behind the famous, and controversial, Sun headline 'Gotcha!' We track the collision course between the British submarine Conqueror and the Argentine warship - as the two sides and everyone aboard head towards the climactic moment just outside the exclusion zone set up by the British around the Falkland Isles. We witness the behind-the-scenes arguments , discussions and powerbroking that led to the decision to fire the three torpedoes. And, for the first time, we hear from the sailors on both sides - the personal testimony of the hunt for and attack on the Belgrano, and from the Argentine side the experience of being under attack and the sinking that left 340 members of her crew dead.