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Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times
By Andrew D. Kaufman. 2014
“This lively appreciation of one of the most intimidating and massive novels ever written should persuade many hesitant readers to…
try scaling the heights of War and Peace sooner rather than later” (Publishers Weekly).Considered by many critics the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is also one of the most feared. And at 1,500 pages, it’s no wonder why. Still, in July 2009 Newsweek put War and Peace at the top of its list of 100 great novels and a 2007 edition of the AARP Bulletin included the novel in their list of the top four books everybody should read by the age of fifty. A New York Times survey from 2009 identified Warand Peace as the world classic you’re most likely to find people reading on their subway commute to work. What might all those Newsweek devotees, senior citizens, and harried commuters see in a book about the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s? War and Peace is many things. It is a love story, a family saga, a war novel. But at its core it’s a novel about human beings attempting to create a meaningful life for themselves in a country torn apart by war, social change, political intrigue, and spiritual confusion. It is a mirror of our times.Give War and Peace a Chance takes readers on a journey through War and Peace that reframes their very understanding of what it means to live through troubled times and survive them. Touching on a broad range of topics, from courage to romance, parenting to death, Kaufman demonstrates how Tolstoy’s wisdom can help us live fuller, more meaningful lives. The ideal companion to War and Peace, this book “makes Tolstoy’s characters lively and palpable…and may well persuade readers to finally dive into one of the world’s most acclaimed—and daunting—novels” (Kirkus Reviews).How to Think About God: A Guide for the 20th-Century Pagan
By Mortimer J. Adler. 1991
Dr. Adler, in his discussion, extends and modernizes the argument for the existence of God developed by Aristotle and Aquinas.…
Without relying on faith, mysticism, or science (none of which, according to Dr. Adler, can prove or disprove the existence of God), he uses a rationalist argument to lead the reader to a point where he or she can see that the existence of God is not necessarily dependent upon a suspension of disbelief. Dr. Adler provides a nondogmatic exposition of the principles behind the belief that God, or some other supernatural cause, has to exist in some form. Through concise and lucid arguments, Dr. Adler shapes a highly emotional and often erratic conception of God into a credible and understandable concept for the lay person.At last, you can grasp the most difficult concepts of thought!If you&’ve always wanted to learn about philosophy but were…
too intimidated to get past the first word ending in &“ism,&” The Everything Philosophy Book provides simple explanations guaranteed to make philosophic ideas and concepts easy to understand.This entertaining book offers a broad overview of many diverse schools of thought—from antiquity up through the present day. In plain English, author James Mannion explains all of the great philosophies—and even provides contemporary examples to put them in perspective. Interspersed are fascinating sidebars that offer helpful hints toward understanding complex concepts and little-known facts about the lives of great philosophers.The Everything Philosophy Book delves into the minds of such philosophers as: -Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle -Augustine and Aquinas -Buddha and Confucius -Spinoza and Descartes -Locke and Hume -Voltaire and Rousseau -Mill and Nietzsche -Russell and SartreEndlessly fascinating—and always clear and concise—The Everything Philosophy Book will be welcomed by anyone who wants to broaden his or her outlook on life.Beckett Ongoing: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century)
By Michael Krimper, Gabriel Quigley. 2024
“You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” These are some of the most quoted lines written…
by Samuel Beckett, which speak to the impulse of persevering in times of crisis and impossibility. Yet few readers of Beckett agree about what this paradoxical formula could mean, let alone what mode of engagement it would seem to indicate, be it committed, autonomous, or something else entirely. This volume of essays explores what that mode of engagement could be, all the while elucidating the ethical and political stakes of the “ongoing” in both Beckett’s life and work. Across multiple disciplines in the humanities, the authors delve into questions of political subjectivity and representation, the ethics of powerlessness and refusal, the aesthetics of syncopation and destitution, multimedia experiments between genre, as well as Beckett’s wider impact on transnational itineraries of modernism and philosophy up to the contemporary.This textbook provides an introduction to cultural policy in the US, enabling both students and practitioners to understand how government…
impacts the arts and culture.Starting with an historical overview of why and how the US developed a national cultural policy, the book goes on to trace the contemporary system of national, state, and local arts and cultural agencies through which that policy is put into practice. Readers are provided both in-depth frameworks for conceptualizing how government regulation and provision shape the arts and culture and carefully illustrated examples of cultural policy in action. Covering critical issues in US cultural policy such as the Culture Wars, culture-led development and gentrification, and field-wide data and research capacities, the book builds a bridge between theory, practice, and politics in the arts and culture. This new edition includes enhanced visualizations and policy maps, expanded policy labs, and a new section on cultural policy during COVID-19.The result is a text that is essential reading for students and reflective practitioners of arts and cultural management and administration.The Ethics and Economics of Liberal Democracies: Foundations for PPE
By Carl Cavanagh Hodge, Andrew David Irvine. 2024
Rarely in the short history of liberal-democratic government has a primer on basic liberal-democratic values and institutions been more needed…
than now. Popular discontent, even anger, with democratic governments has grown steadily over the past twenty years. Not since the 1930s have citizens and their elected officials been so baffled about their respective roles in the maintenance of both democratic governments and liberal economies. This book attempts to address this growing need. Especially written as a primer for courses in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), it has introductory chapters on all three main disciplines. It also has chapters on the rule of law and on three important public-policy areas – Corruption, Climate and Civil Society. Individual topics discussed include free and fair elections, populism, responsible government, republican and Westminster systems of government, regulated free markets, the Great Recession of 2008, globalization, greenwashing, identity politics, academic freedom, utilitarianism, social contract theory, positive and negative liberty, and the good life.Historically informed, The Ethics and Economics of Liberal Democracies: Foundations for PPE is sure to be of interest to students who are interested in public-policy work, as well as those who are interested in both the theory and practice of democratic government.Key Features: Written especially for PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) courses and students Focuses on the key values and institutions of modern democracies Includes chapters on both the theory and practice of democratic government and public-policy work Provides a comprehensive glossary of relevant terms from all three disciplinesMediocracy: The Politics of the Extreme Centre
By Alain Deneault. 2018
There was no Reichstag fire. No storming of the Bastille. No mutiny on the Aurora. Instead, the mediocre have seized…
power without firing a single shot. They rose to power on the tide of an economy where workers produce assembly-line meals without knowing how to cook at home, give customers instructions over the phone that they themselves don’t understand, or sell books and newspapers that they never read. Canadian intellectual juggernaut Alain Deneault has taken on all kinds of evildoers: mining companies, tax-dodgers, and corporate criminals. Now he takes on the most menacing threat of all: the mediocre.Conform, Fail, Repeat: How Power Distorts Collective Action
By Christopher Samuel. 2017
Anti-globalization activists have done little to slow capitalism’s global march. Many of the gains made by decades of identity-based movements…
have been limited to privileged subgroups. The lesson of these movements is clear: struggle for change is essential, but the direction of change matters considerably. Like movements of the past, current social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, and the growing anti-Trump movement, must navigate a path between reformism and radicalism, pragmatism and idealism, capture and independence. In Conform, Fail, Repeat, Christopher Samuel uses Pierre Bourdieu’s central “thinking tools” to show how power and domination force movements into a no-win choice between conformity and failure. With special attention to North American LGBTQ politics and the G20 protests in Toronto, Conform, Fail, Repeat shows how Bourdieu’s work can give movement observers as well as participants new tools for tracking and avoiding the pitfalls of conformity and failure.The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map
By Ursula Franklin. 2006
Feminist, educator, Quaker, and physicist, Ursula Franklin has long been considered one of Canada’s foremost advocates and practitioners of pacifism.…
The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map is a comprehensive collection of her work, and demonstrates subtle, yet critical, linkages across a range of subjects: the pursuit of peace and social justice, theology, feminism, environmental protection, education, government, and citizen activism. This thoughtful collection, drawn from more than four decades of research and teaching, brings readers into an intimate discussion with Franklin, and makes a passionate case for how to build a society centered around peace.The Noumenal Republic: Critical Constructivism After Kant
By Rainer Forst. 2024
All human beings are born with equal dignity and possess equal rights. This statement appears normatively just as irrefutable as it…
is empirically refuted every day. But what are the grounds of this principle, and how should we think about its realization? Its philosophical truth can best be explained by going back to (and beyond) Kant’s notion of a ‘noumenal republic’ in which every person is an equal co-author of the laws that bind all. At the same time, a critical analysis of society and politics must show the extent to which the reality of power and ideology makes a mockery of this constructivist conception of dignity. To bridge the gap between unworldly idealism and practical hopelessness, we need a critical theory after Kant. Rainer Forst, one of the world’s most influential political philosophers, works to develop just such a theory in this powerful and illuminating volume. It contains no less than a new systematic account of concepts such as alienation, progress and regression, solidarity, human rights, justice, power and non-domination.Seeing Double
By Raymond Geuss. 2024
The world is never going to make complete sense to us, yet we find that conclusion almost impossible to accept.…
Can we live, and feel at home, in a world composed at best of incompatible fragments of meaning?This is the theme that runs through this collection of essays by Raymond Geuss. Drawing on a characteristically wide range of insights from moral and political philosophy, history, and aesthetics, he addresses topics such as knowledge (of self, the world, and others), language, the visual and the auditory, authority, hope, and the success and failure of life projects. He argues that, to get by in our bewildering world, we must embrace the virtue of ‘double vision’: that is, immersing ourselves in and learning the ways of the culture surrounding us, even as we feel alienated from it. Together the essays explore some of the consequences of abandoning the idea of a unitary view of the world, while at the same time trying to avoid quietism.Seeing Double is a compelling collection of work by one of the world’s most versatile and creative philosophers.Frantz Fanon: Combat Breathing (Black Lives)
By Nigel C. Gibson. 2024
Revolutionary humanist and radical psychiatrist Frantz Fanon was one of the greatest Black thinkers of the twentieth century. Born in…
Martinique and known for his involvement in the Algerian liberation movement, his seminal books Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth are widely considered to be cornerstones of anti-colonial and anti-racist thought.In this essential introduction to Fanon’s remarkable life and philosophy, Nigel C. Gibson argues that Fanon’s oeuvre is essential to thinking about race today. Connecting Fanon’s writing, psychiatric practice, and lived experience in the Caribbean, France, and Africa, Gibson reveals (with startling clarity) his philosophical commitments and the vision of revolution that he stood for. Despite his untimely death, the revolutionary pulse of Fanon’s ideas has continued to beat ever more strongly in the consciousness of successive revolutionary generations, from the Black Panthers and the Black Power to Black Lives Matter.As Fanon’s thought comes alive to new activists thinking about their mission to “humanize the world,” Gibson reminds us that that Fanon’s revolutionary humanism is fundamental to all forms of anti-colonial struggle, including our own.We live in a culture of choice. But, in an age of corporate dominance, our freedom to choose has taken…
on new meaning. Upset with your local big box store? Object to unfair hiring practices at your neighbourhood fast food restaurant? Want to protest the opening of that new multinational coffeeshop? Vote with your feet! What if it’s not that simple? In No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart, Tom Slee unpacks the implications of our fervent belief in the power of choice. Pointing out that individual choice has become the lynchpin of a neoconservative corporate ideology he calls MarketThink, he urges us to re-examine our assumptions. Slee makes use of game theory to argue that individual choice is not inherently bad. Nor is it the societal fix-all that our corporations and governments claim it is. A spirited treatise, this book will make you think about choice in a whole new way.Physis, Biopower, and Biothermodynamics: The Fire of Life (ISSN)
By Enrique Leff. 2024
Building upon the idea that our current "environmental question" arises from the history of metaphysics—which privileged thought about Being (or…
ontology) over the conditions of life—this book reinterprets Heraclitus’s notion of physis as the fundamental, emergent potency of life, as the category to-be-thought by thinkers. In so doing, it deconstructs the interpretation offered by Heidegger and so stresses the struggle between the creative force of life and its subjection to the human Logos or "meaning". Physis, understood as the pre-ontological potentiality of life itself, thus becomes the cornerstone of a materialist philosophy of life.Following engagements with the work of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Janicaud to explore the significance of human intervention into the realm of life via the "will to power", "biopower" and the "power of rationality" respectively, the author explores twentieth-century rearticulations of the concept of physis through a range of developments in biothermodynamics, thus grounding a new philosophy of life and a new bioeconomics in a revisited biothermodynamics centered on the concept of negentropy.An extensive engagement with the history and development of thought about the generative force of life on Earth, Physis, Biopower, Biothermodynamics, and Bioeconomics: The Fire of Life will appeal to scholars of philosophy, social theory, and political theory with interests in environmental thought, political ecology, and questions of sustainability.Rapture (No Limits)
By Christopher Hamilton. 2024
What is it like to experience rapture? For philosopher Christopher Hamilton, it is a loss of self that is also…
a return to self—an overflowing and emptying out of the self that also nourishes and fills the self. In this inviting book, he reflects on the nature of rapture and its crucial yet unacknowledged place in our lives.Hamilton explores moments of rapture in everyday existence and aesthetic experience, tracing its disruptive power and illuminating its philosophical significance. Rapture is found in sexual love and other forms of intense physical experience, such as Philippe Petit’s nerve-defying wire walk between the Twin Towers. Hamilton also locates it in quieter but equally joyous moments, such as contemplating a work of art or the natural world. He considers a range of examples in philosophy and culture—Nietzsche and Weil, Woolf and Chekhov, the extremes of experience in Werner Herzog’s films—as well as aspects of ordinary life, from illness to gardening. Conversational and evocative, this book calls on us to ask how we might make ourselves more open to experiences of rapturous joy and freedom.Philosophizing the Americas
By Stephanie Rivera Berruz, Jacoby Adeshei Carter, Nadia Celis, Tommy J. Curry, Hernando Arturo Estévez, Daniel Fryer, James B. Haile III, Chike Jeffers, Lee A. McBride III, Michael J. Monahan, Adriana Novoa, Susana Nuccetelli, Andrea Pitts, Dwayne A. Tunstall, Alejandro Vallega. 2024
Philosophizing the Americas establishes the field of inter-American philosophy. Bringing together contributors who work in Africana Philosophy, Afro-Caribbean philosophy, Latin…
American philosophy, Afro-Latin philosophy, decolonial theory, and African American philosophy, the volume examines the full range of traditions that have, separately and in conversation with each other, worked through how philosophy in both establishes itself in the Americas and engages with the world from which it emerges.The book traces a range of questions, from the history of philosophy in the Americas to philosophical questions of race, feminism, racial eliminativism, creolization, epistemology, coloniality, aesthetics, and literature. The essays place an impressive range of philosophical traditions and figures into dialogue with one another: some familiar, such as José Martí, Sylvia Wynter, Martin R. Delany, José Vasconcelos, Alain Locke, as well as such less familiar thinkers as Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Hilda Hilst, and George Lamming. In each chapter, the contributors find fascinating and productive matrices of tension or convergence in works throughout the Americas. The result is an original and important contribution to knowledge that introduces readers from various disciplines to unfamiliar yet compelling ideas and considers familiar texts from novel and prescient perspectives. Philosophizing the Americas stands alone as a representation of current scholarly debates in the field of inter-American philosophy.The Berlin Antisemitism Controversy
By Frederick C. Beiser. 2024
After a long struggle, Jewish emancipation was formally completed in Germany in 1871, when Wilhelm I abolished religious discrimination across…
the entire Reich. Yet the very same decade witnessed a new wave of antisemitism, one more vicious and virulent than anything before. At its centre was what is known as ‘The Berlin Antisemitism Controversy’. How can this rise of antisemitism be explained when further liberal reform was expected? Can it help us understand the tide of antisemitism that was to engulf Germany fifty years later?In this outstanding book by a leading scholar of German philosophy, Frederick C. Beiser argues that to understand modern antisemitism we must go back in history. Beginning with the background of the controversy and examining the most important antisemitic thinkers of the 1870s and 1880s, he brilliantly analyses the beginnings of modern antisemitism in Germany. Beiser challenges received scholarship that the rise of antisemitism was caused by a failure of the Jews to assimilate and criticises the view, held by Hannah Arendt, that antisemitism was at its peak when Jews were perceived to be powerless and had lost their roles in government and finance. He argues instead that it was fuelled by a fear of Jewish domination that took multiple forms. Exploring antisemitism from both a historical and philosophical perspective, he situates antisemitism in relation to such fundamental questions as the conditions for citizenship in the modern state, what is meant by nationality and what role religion should play in the state. He also vividly and expertly analyses the writings and arguments of those involved in the antisemitism crisis of the 1870s, including Wilhelm Marr, Constantin Frantz and Adolf Treitschke and thinkers who are here examined in English for the first time.The Berlin Antisemitism Controversy sheds much-needed light on an episode whose shockwaves resonate today. It is a superb account of a crucial period of not only German but also European and Jewish history and essential reading for anyone interested in the causes and roots of antisemitism in Germany and beyond.Roads to Decolonisation: An Introduction to Thought from the Global South
By Amy Duvenage. 2024
Roads to Decolonisation: An Introduction to Thought from the Global South is an accessible new textbook that provides undergraduate students…
with a vital introduction to theory from the Global South and key issues of social justice, arming them with the tools to theorise and explain the social world away from dominant Global North perspectives. Arranged in four parts, it examines key thinkers, activists and theory-work from the Global South; theoretical concepts and socio-historical conditions associated with 'race' and racism, gender and sexuality, identity and (un)belonging in a globalised world and decolonisation and education; challenges to dominant Euro-American perspectives on key social justice issues, linking decolonial discourses to contemporary case studies. Each chapter offers an overview of key thinkers and activists whose work engages with social justice issues, many of whom are under-represented or left out of undergraduate humanities and social sciences textbooks in the North. This is essential reading for students of the humanities and social sciences worldwide, as well as scholars keen to embed Southern thought in their curricula and pedagogical practice.For the Love of Life
By Erich Fromm. 2011
This poignant philosophy about the human capacity for love in the face of tragedy from the New York Times–bestselling author…
is as relevant today as it was when it was first broadcast. Transcribed from a series of recorded conversations streamed over German public radio in 1970, the profound ideas and thoughts collected in this volume represent a lifetime of the renowned psychoanalyst and social philosopher&’s explorations into human emotion and behavior throughout the twentieth century. Insightful and provocative, Erich Fromm meditates on the preoccupations that drive human action or inaction, interweaving related ideas from such profound thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Albert Camus, and Karl Marx. Here, Fromm recognizes the links between rising contemptuous boredom and overwhelming overabundance. He unravels the confusing mysteries of religious doctrines by examining the causes and motives behind our aggressive tendencies and revealing how dreams connect us all as a universal language. Fromm&’s perspective offers a vivid portrait of our ever-evolving social history and the difficulty of experiencing personal growth in a world driven by &“manufactured needs.&” Despite all of modern life&’s trials, For the Love of Life celebrates Fromm&’s belief in the human spirit to rise above tragedy and trauma through the bonds of family, friendship, and the transcendent power of love.Includes a preface by Hans Jürgen Schultz.Basic Equality
By Paul Sagar. 2024
An innovative argument that vindicates our normative commitment to basic equality, synthesising philosophy, history, and psychologyWhat makes human beings one…
another&’s equals? That we are "basic equals" has become a bedrock assumption in Western moral and political philosophy. And yet establishing why we ought to believe this claim has proved fiendishly difficult, floundering in the face of the many inequalities that characterise the human condition. In this provocative work, Paul Sagar offers a novel approach to explaining and justifying basic equality. Rather than attempting to find an independent foundation for basic equality, he argues, we should instead come to see our commitment to this idea as the result of the practice of treating others as equals. Moreover, he continues, it is not enough to grapple with the problem through philosophy alone—by just thinking very hard, in our armchairs; we must draw insights from history and psychology as well.Sagar writes that, as things stand, there appear to be no good arguments for believing in the truth of basic equality. Indeed, for much of Western intellectual history and social practice, basic inequality has been the default position. How is it then, Sagar asks, that in Western societies, in a period of less than a century, basic equality emerged as the dominant view? Sagar approaches this not as a mere philosophical puzzle, but as a dramatic historical development. In so doing, he shows us what is at stake when human beings treat one another as equals just because they are human beings.