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The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America
by Michael J. GraetzHow the antitax fringe went mainstream—and now threatens America&’s futureThe postwar United States enjoyed large, widely distributed economic rewards—and most Americans accepted that taxes were a reasonable price to pay for living in a society of shared prosperity. Then in 1978 California enacted Proposition 13, a property tax cap that Ronald Reagan hailed as a &“second American Revolution,&” setting off an antitax, antigovernment wave that has transformed American politics and economic policy. In The Power to Destroy, Michael Graetz tells the story of the antitax movement and how it holds America hostage—undermining the nation&’s ability to meet basic needs and fix critical problems.In 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that the power to tax entails &“the power to destroy.&” But The Power to Destroy argues that tax opponents now wield this destructive power. Attacking the IRS, protecting tax loopholes, and pushing tax cuts from Reagan to Donald Trump, the antitax movement is threatening the nation&’s social safety net, increasing inequality, ballooning the national debt, and sapping America&’s financial strength. The book chronicles how the movement originated as a fringe enterprise promoted by zealous outsiders using false economic claims and thinly veiled racist rhetoric, and how—abetted by conservative media and Grover Norquist&’s &“taxpayer protection pledge"—it evolved into a mainstream political force.The important story of how the antitax movement came to dominate and distort politics, and how it impedes rational budgeting, equality, and opportunities, The Power to Destroy is essential reading for understanding American life today.
Power versus Liberty: Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, and Jefferson
by James H. ReadDoes every increase in the power of government entail a loss of liberty for the people? James H. Read examines how four key Founders--James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson--wrestled with this question during the first two decades of the American Republic.Power versus Liberty reconstructs a four-way conversation--sometimes respectful, sometimes shrill--that touched on the most important issues facing the new nation: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, federal authority versus states' rights, freedom of the press, the controversial Bank of the United States, the relation between nationalism and democracy, and the elusive meaning of "the consent of the governed."Each of the men whose thought Read considers differed on these key questions. Jefferson believed that every increase in the power of government came at the expense of liberty: energetic governments, he insisted, are always oppressive. Madison believed that this view was too simple, that liberty can be threatened either by too much or too little governmental power. Hamilton and Wilson likewise rejected the Jeffersonian view of power and liberty but disagreed with Madison and with each other.The question of how to reconcile energetic government with the liberty of citizens is as timely today as it was in the first decades of the Republic. It pervades our political discourse and colors our readings of events from the confrontation at Waco to the Oklahoma City bombing to Congressional debate over how to spend the government surplus. While the rhetoric of both major political parties seems to posit a direct relationship between the size of our government and the scope of our political freedoms, the debates of Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, and Jefferson confound such simple dichotomies. As Read concludes, the relation between power and liberty is inherently complex.
Power, Voting, and Voting Power: 30 Years After
by Hannu Nurmi Manfred J HollerThe developments over a thirty-year time span in the study of power, especially voting power, are traced in this book, which provides an up-to-date overview of applications of n-person game theory to the study of power in multimember bodies. Other theories that shed light on power distribution (e.g. aggregation theory) are treated as well. The book revisits the themes discussed in the well-known 1982 publication "Power, Voting and Voting Power" (edited by Manfred J. Holler). Thirty years later this essential topic has been taken up again and many of the authors from its predecessor participate here again in discussing the state-of-the-art, demonstrating the achievements of three decades of intensive research, and pointing the way to key issues for future work.
Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahayana Buddhism: The Gandavyuha-sutra (Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism)
by Douglas OstoThis book examines the concepts of power, wealth and women in the important Mahayana Buddhist scripture known as the Gandavyuha-sutra, and relates these to the text’s social context in ancient Indian during the Buddhist Middle Period (0–500 CE). Employing contemporary textual theory, worldview analysis and structural narrative theory, the author puts forward a new approach to the study of Mahayana Buddhist sources, the ‘systems approach’, by which literature is viewed as embedded in a social system. Consequently, he analyses the Gandavyuha in the contexts of reality, society and the individual, and applies these notions to the key themes of power, wealth and women. The study reveals that the spiritual hierarchy represented within the Gandavyuha replicates the political hierarchies in India during Buddhism’s Middle Period, that the role of wealth mirrors its significance as a sign of spiritual status in Indian Buddhist society, and that the substantial number of female spiritual guides in the narrative reflects the importance of royal women patrons of Indian Buddhism at the time. This book will appeal to higher-level undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars of religious studies, Buddhist studies, Asian studies, South Asian studies and Indology.
Power without Force
by Robert W. JackmanExplores the ways states build political capacity; discusses how states learn to resolve conflict politically rather than violently
Powerful Beyond Measure: 3 Steps to Claim Your Power Within for a Happy & Healthy Life
by Cynthia E. MazzaferroA transformational guide to living a life of authenticity and abundance, rooted in love, acceptance, compassion, and kindness. Learn how to discover and embrace your inner power, release and heal the emotional residue from the past, and envision a future of unbounded possibilities that allows your passions and purpose to be fulfilled. Through insight, self-exploration, and step-by-step practical exercises, Powerful Beyond Measure guides you along the journey of lifelong spiritual growth—empowering you to take control of your destiny and create a life filled with joy, health, happiness, and success.
Powerful Knowledge in Religious Education: Exploring Paths to A Knowledge-Based Education on Religions
by Olof Franck Peder ThalénThis book unites and explores different approaches to understand and develop knowledge-based religious education. While the importance of methodological issues in RE is understood and acknowledged, the editors and contributors interrogate what kind of knowledge should be explored, how this knowledge is defined and what the consequences would be. Subsequently, the book focuses on the concept of powerful knowledge which transcends students' everyday experiences, and how it can be incorporated into the RE curriculum. Drawing together international research from RE teaching and learning, the book explores various paths to integrate a truly knowledge-based religious education. The book will appeal to students and scholars of religious education, sociology of education and the philosophy of religion.
A Powerful Particulars View of Causation (Routledge Studies in Metaphysics)
by R.D. IngthorssonThis book critically examines the recent discussions of powers and powers-based accounts of causation. The author then develops an original view of powers-based causation that aims to be compatible with the theories and findings of natural science. Recently, there has been a dramatic revival of realist approaches to properties and causation, which focus on the relevance of Aristotelian metaphysics and the notion of powers for a scientifically informed view of causation. In this book, R.D. Ingthorsson argues that one central feature of powers-based accounts of causation is arguably incompatible with what is today recognised as fact in the sciences, notably that all interactions are thoroughly reciprocal. Ingthorsson’s powerful particulars view of causation accommodates for the reciprocity of interactions. It also draws out the consequences of that view for issue of causal necessity and offers a way to understand the constitution and persistence of compound objects as causal phenomena. Furthermore, Ingthorsson argues that compound entities, so understood, are just as much processes as they are substances. A Powerful Particulars View of Causation will be of great interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and neo-Aristotelian philosophy, while also being accessible for a general audience. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781003094241, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Powers and Abilities in Early Modern Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy)
by Sebastian BenderThis book explores different accounts of powers and abilities in early modern philosophy. It analyzes powers and abilities as a package, hopefully enabling us to better understand them both and to see similarities as well as dissimilarities.While some prominent early modern accounts of power have been studied in detail, this volume also covers lesser‑known thinkers and several early modern women philosophers. The volume also investigates early modern accounts of powers and abilities in a more systematic fashion than has been previously done. By broadening its scope in these ways, the volume uncovers trends and tendencies in early modern thinking about powers and abilities that are easy to miss. Chapters in this book explore how 22 early modern thinkers approached the following questions: What kind of entities are powers and abilities? Are they reducible to something categorical or not? What is the relation between powers and abilities? Is there a fundamental metaphysical difference between them or not? How do we know what powers objects have and what abilities agents have? Are human abilities in any way special? How do they relate to the abilities non‑human animals have? And how do they relate to the powers of inanimate objects? Powers and Abilities in Early Modern Philosophy will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in the history of early modern philosophy, in metaphysics, and in the history of science.
Powers and Capacities in Philosophy: The New Aristotelianism
by Ruth Groff John GrecoPowers and Capacities in Philosophy is designed to stake out an emerging, discipline-spanning neo-Aristotelian framework grounded in realism about causal powers. The volume brings together for the first time original essays by leading philosophers working on powers in relation to metaphysics, philosophy of natural and social science, philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, ethics and social and political philosophy. In each area, the concern is to show how a commitment to real causal powers affects discussion at the level in question. In metaphysics, for example, realism about powers is now recognized as providing an alternative to orthodox accounts of causation, modality, properties and laws. Dispositional realist philosophers of science, meanwhile, argue that a powers ontology allows for a proper account of the nature of scientific explanation. In the philosophy of mind there is the suggestion that agency is best understood in terms of the distinctive powers of human beings. Those who take virtue theoretic approaches in epistemology and ethics have long been interested in the powers that allow for knowledge and/or moral excellence. In social and political philosophy, finally, powers theorists are interested in the powers of sociological phenomena such as collectivities, institutions, roles and/or social relations, but also in the conditions of possibility for the cultivation of the powers of individuals. The book will be of interest to philosophers working in any of these areas, as well as to historians of philosophy, political theorists and critical realists.
Powers and Prospects: Reflections on Nature and the Social Order
by Noam ChomskyFrom the nature of democracy to our place in the natural world, from intellectual politics to the politics of language, Powers and Prospects provides a scathing critique of orthodox views and government policy, and outlines other paths that can lead to better understanding an more constructive action.
Powers of Abjection: Politics and Lacanian Ontology (Psychoanalytic Political Theory)
by null Ricardo Laleff IlieffIn this book, Ricardo Laleff Ilieff presents a new ontological understanding of politics through the writings of Julia Kristeva’s notion of “abjection” in dialogue with Sigmund Freud’s concept of “Unheimlich” and Jacques Lacan’s ontology “du rél”.Aimed at those who are interested in the politics-psychoanalytic “praxis”, Laleff Ilieff argues that the abject enables one to critically read conceptual developments that are central to contemporary thought. Examining the abject in sacrifice, war, and the One as articulated by contemporary thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Carl Schmitt, RenéGirard, Pierre Clastres, Giorgio Agamben, and Jacques Rancièe, Laleff Ilieff argues that abjection does not operate on the margins of the social but is what unveils the failure of all identity.Powers of Abjection provides new questions and insights into the relation between psychoanalysis and politics and is an invaluable resource to students and scholars.
The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass
by Nick BromellIn The Powers of Dignity Nick Bromell unpacks Frederick Douglass's 1867 claim that he had “elaborated a political philosophy” from his own “slave experience.” Bromell shows that Douglass devised his philosophy because he found that antebellum Americans' liberal-republican understanding of democracy did not provide a sufficient principled basis on which to fight anti-Black racism. To remedy this deficiency, Douglass deployed insights from his distinctively Black experience and developed a Black philosophy of democracy. He began by contesting the founders' racist assumptions about humanity and advancing instead a more robust theory of “the human” as a collection of human “powers.” He asserted further that the conscious exercise of those powers is what confirms human dignity and that human rights and democracy come into being as ways to affirm and protect that dignity. Thus, by emphasizing the powers and the dignity of all citizens, deriving democratic rights from these, and promoting a remarkably activist, power-oriented model of citizenship, Douglass's Black political philosophy aimed to rectify two major failings of US democracy in his time and ours: its complacence and its racism.
The Powers of Pure Reason: Kant and the Idea of Cosmic Philosophy
by Alfredo FerrarinThe Critique of Pure Reason--Kant’s First Critique--is one of the most studied texts in intellectual history, but as Alfredo Ferrarin points out in this radically original book, most of that study has focused only on very select parts. Likewise, Kant’s oeuvre as a whole has been compartmentalized, the three Critiques held in rigid isolation from one another. Working against the standard reading of Kant that such compartmentalization has produced, The Powers of Pure Reason explores forgotten parts of the First Critique in order to find an exciting, new, and ultimately central set of concerns by which to read all of Kant’s works. Ferrarin blows the dust off of two egregiously overlooked sections of the First Critique--the Transcendental Dialectic and the Doctrine of Method. There he discovers what he argues is the Critique’s greatest achievement: a conception of the unity of reason and an exploration of the powers it has to reach beyond itself and legislate over the world. With this in mind, Ferrarin dismantles the common vision of Kant as a philosopher writing separately on epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics and natural teleology, showing that the three Critiques are united by this underlying theme: the autonomy and teleology of reason, its power and ends. The result is a refreshing new view of Kant, and of reason itself.
Powers of Time: Versions of Bergson (Univocal)
by David LapoujadeHow is it that when we think of time, we hardly think of the role affect plays in granting us access to time: the sense of waiting, regret, mourning, melancholy? In Powers of Time, David Lapoujade returns to two central themes that continuously converge throughout the writings of the French philosopher Henri Bergson: durée (duration) and intuition. If duration is synonymous with memory, how are we then capable of thinking an authentic sense of the future? Does this mean that freedom is nothing more than a reprisal of our past?Lapoujade uncovers multiple versions of Bergson: a philosopher of sympathy, a melancholic philosopher, a perspectivist Bergson, a spiritualist Bergson. Leading us beyond simplistic anthropomorphic conceptions of temporality and intuition, Lapoujade&’s multiple Bergsons guide us to encounter a rapport with time, memory, and duration that places us in direct contact with the nonhuman flows and movements of the universe.
Powers, Parts and Wholes: Essays on the Mereology of Powers (Routledge Studies in Metaphysics)
by Andrea Roselli Christopher J. Austin Anna MarmodoroThis volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts–whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology. Powers are often assumed to be atomic, and yet what they can do—and what can happen to them—is complex. But if powers are simple, how can they have complex manifestations? Can powers have parts? According to which rules of composition do powers compose into powers? Given the centrality of powers in current scientific as well as philosophical thought, recognizing and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers is important, for both philosophy and science. The first part of this book explores how powers divide; the second part, how powers compose. The final part showcases some specific study cases in the domains of quantum mechanics and psychology. Powers, Parts and Wholes will be of interest to professional philosophers and graduate students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science and logic.
Powers, Possessions and Freedom: Essays in Honour of C.B. Macpherson
by Alkis KontosCrawford Brough Macpherson has been teaching at the University of Toronto for some forty years, building an international reputation through his identification and critique of possessive individualism as a core concept in Western liberal democratic theory. The essays brought together here from eminent scholars all over the English-speaking world are independent statements on the issues that preoccupy Macpherson - powers, possessions, and freedom, the central problems in political theory. They are arranged in a historical sequence, touching on the thought of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, and Macpherson himself, and facing with vigour and originality the dilemmas of liberal-democratic and Marxian theory of social and political life. It concludes with an explication by the editor of the inner parable of Durrenmatt's play, The Visit, as a profound critique of capitalism, and with a bibliography of Macpherson's published work.
Powers, Time and Free Will (Synthese Library #451)
by Christopher J. Austin Anna Marmodoro Andrea RoselliThis book brings together twelve original contributions by leading scholars on the much-debated issues of what is free will and how can we exercise it in a world governed by laws of nature. Which conception of laws of nature best fits with how we conceive of free will? And which constraints does our conception of the laws of nature place on how we think of free will? The metaphysics of causation and the metaphysics of dispositions are also explored in this edited volume, in relation to whether they may or may not be game-changers in how we think about both free will and the laws of nature. The volume presents the views of a range of international experts on these issues, and aims at providing the reader with novel approaches to a core problem in philosophy. The target audience is composed by academics and scholars who are interested in an original and contemporary approach to these long-debated issues.Chapters [2] and [4] are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
The Practical Anarchist: Writings of Josiah Warren (American Philosophy)
by Crispin SartwellThe Practical Anarchist brings to light the work of Josiah Warren, eccentric American genius. Devoting his life to showing the practicality of an astonishing ideal, Warren devoted equal industry to the question of how to make a pair of shoes and how to remake the social world into an individualist paradise.This will be the first chance for many readers to encounter Warren’s writings, and in many cases their first publication since their original appearance in obscure, self-published periodicals, including The Peaceful Revolutionist (1833), the first American anarchist periodical. Moreover, they often appeared in a bizarre experimental typography.This volume presents, out of the welter of bewildering writings left by Warren, a reading text designed for today’ readers and students. It seeks to convey the practical value of many of Warren’s ideas, their continuing relevance.
Practical Applications of the Philosophy of Science: Thinking about Research
by Peter TruranExplores the practical applicability of the philosophy of science to scientific research, but also considers its relevance to practice within the realms of technology, design, crafts, and even within the world of arts and the humanities. The attempt to engage working scientists with the issues raised by the philosophy of science may profitably be extended to examine its applicability to any other fields of knowledge that encompass a problem-solving dimension. Drawing on his experience as a research and development scientist in the biomedical device industry, the author shows how the principles of the philosophy of science illuminate the research process. The book is structured on the concept of the inspirational text; it consists of short chapters, each of which provides an accessible discussion of an aspect of the philosophy of science. Each chapter concludes with a list of practical pointers towards the development of attitudes and skills which will benefit the student researcher.
Practical Approaches to Causal Relationship Exploration
by Jiuyong Li Lin Liu Thuc Duy LeThis brief presents four practical methods to effectively explore causal relationships, which are often used for explanation, prediction and decision making in medicine, epidemiology, biology, economics, physics and social sciences. The first two methods apply conditional independence tests for causal discovery. The last two methods employ association rule mining for efficient causal hypothesis generation, and a partial association test and retrospective cohort study for validating the hypotheses. All four methods are innovative and effective in identifying potential causal relationships around a given target, and each has its own strength and weakness. For each method, a software tool is provided along with examples demonstrating its use. Practical Approaches to Causal Relationship Exploration is designed for researchers and practitioners working in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, and biomedical research. The material also benefits advanced students interested in causal relationship discovery.
Practical Autonomy and Bioethics (Routledge Annals of Bioethics)
by James Stacey TaylorThis is the first volume in which an account of personal autonomy is developed that both captures the contours of this concept as it is used in social philosophy and bioethics, and is theoretically grounded in, and a part of, contemporary autonomy theory. James Stacey Taylor’s account is unique as it is explicitly a political one, recognizing that the attribution of autonomy to agents is dependent in part on their relationships with others and not merely upon their own mental states. The volume is distinctive in its examples, which touch on the ethics of using inducements to encourage persons to participate in medical research, the ethical issues associated with the use of antibiotics, and the ethical basis for both patient confidentiality and informed consent.
A Practical Companion to Ethics
by Anthony WestonA Practical Companion to Ethics, Fourth Edition, is a concise and accessible introduction to the basic attitudes and skills that make ethics work, like thinking for oneself, creative and integrative problem-solving, and keeping an open mind. This unique volume illuminates the broad kinds of practical intelligence required in moral judgment, complementing the narrower theoretical considerations that often dominate ethics courses. It offers practical instruction in problem-solving by demonstrating how to frame an ethical problem and deal effectively with ethical disagreements. The book also presents ethics as an ongoing learning experience, helping students to engage constructively with both the complexities of their individual lives and with the larger issues that exist in the world around them. <p><p> The fourth edition retains the most popular features of the previous edition, including challenging and relevant end-of-chapter exercises and brief text boxes that define key terms and review core strategies. The optimistic tone and brisk pace of the narrative provide an entertaining and intelligent guide to "everyday" morality. Ideal for introductory courses in ethics and applied ethics, A Practical Companion to Ethics, Fourth Edition, can also be used in any course related to critical thinking.
Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment
by I. A. RichardsLinguist, critic, poet, psychologist, I. A. Richards (1893-1979) was one of the great polymaths of the twentieth century. He is best known, however, as one of the founders of modern literary critical theory. Richards revolutionized criticism by turning away from biographical and historical readings as well as from the aesthetic impressionism. Seeking a more exacting approach, he analyzed literary texts as syntactical structures that could be broken down into smaller interacting verbal units of meaning. Practical Criticism, fi rst published in 1929, is a landmark volume in demonstrating this method.
The Practical Einstein: Experiments, Patents, Inventions
by József Illy2012 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice MagazineAlbert Einstein may be best known as the wire-haired whacky physicist who gave us the theory of relativity, but that’s just one facet of this genius’s contribution to human knowledge and modern science. As József Illy expertly shows in this book, Einstein had an eminently practical side as well.As a youth, Einstein was an inveterate tinkerer in the electrical supply factory his father and uncle owned and operated. His first paid job was as a patent examiner. Later in life, Einstein contributed to many inventions, including refrigerators, microphones, and instruments for aviation. In published papers, Einstein often provided ways to test his theories and fundamental problems of the scientific community of his times. He delved deeply into a variety of technological innovations, most notably the gyrocompass, and consulted for industry in patent cases and on other legal matters. Einstein also provided explanations for common and mundane phenomena, such as the meandering of rivers. In these and other hands-on examples culled from the Einstein Papers, Illy demonstrates how Einstein enjoyed leaving the abstract world of theories to wrestle with the problems of everyday life.While we may like the idea of Einstein as a genius besotted by extra dimensions and too out-of-this-world to wear socks, The Practical Einstein gives ample evidence that this characterization is both incomplete and an unfair representation of a man who sought to explore the intricacies of nature, whether in theory or in practice.