- Table View
- List View
Commiserating with Devastated Things: Milan Kundera and the Entitlements of Thinking (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)
by Jason M. WirthCommiserating with Devastated Things seeks to understand the place Milan Kundera calls “the universe of the novel.” Working through Kundera’s oeuvre as well as the continental philosophical tradition, Wirth argues that Kundera transforms—not applies—philosophical reflection within literature.Reading between Kundera’s work and his self-avowed tradition, from Kafka to Hermann Broch, Wirth asks what it might mean to insist that philosophy does not have a monopoly on wisdom, that the novel has its own modes of wisdom that challenge philosophy’s.
Commitment (The Art of Living)
by Piers BennMost of us care about certain people and things, and some of these concerns become personal commitments, involving our values, our relationships, our work and our religious or political stances. But what is commitement, and why should it matter? Is social commitment - for example, to the family - being eroded by individualism or ironic detachment? And how should we deal with the potential tension between devotion to a life-stance, and the doubts prompted by pursuit of rational integrity? In this work, Piers Benn delves into the relationship between commitment and meaningful life, and asks whether commitment must be based on truth to provide such meaning. He also explores obstacles to commitment such as boredom, sloth and indifference. Drawing on his own experience of dithering and procrastination, he suggests that a sceptical, cautious attitude to important matters can be both a virtue and a real obstacle to human fulfillment.
Commitment and Resoluteness in Rational Choice (Elements in Decision Theory and Philosophy)
by Chrisoula AndreouDrawing and building on the existing literature, this Element explores the interesting and challenging philosophical terrain where issues regarding cooperation, commitment, and control intersect. Section 1 discusses interpersonal and intrapersonal Prisoner's Dilemma situations, and the possibility of a set of unrestrained choices adding up in a way that is problematic relative to the concerns of the choosers involved. Section 2 focuses on the role of precommitment devices in rational choice. Section 3 considers the role of resoluteness in rational choice and action. And Section 4 delves into some related complications concerning the nature of actions and the nature of intentions.
Committed Writings (Penguin Modern Classics Ser.)
by Albert CamusThe Nobel Prize winner's most influential and enduring political writings, newly curated and introduced by acclaimed Camus scholar Alice Kaplan.Albert Camus (1913-1960) is unsurpassed among writers for a body of work that animates the wonder and absurdity of existence. Committed Writings brings together, for the first time, thematically-linked essays from across Camus's writing career that reflect the scope of his political thought. This pivotal collection embodies Camus's radical and unwavering commitment to upholding human rights, resisting fascism, and creating art in the service of justice.
Committing the Future to Memory: History, Experience, Trauma
by Sarah CliftWhereas historical determinacy conceives the past as a complex and unstable network of causalities, this book asks how history can be related to a more radical future. To pose that question, it does not reject determinacy outright but rather seeks to explore how it works. In examining what it means to be “determined” by history, it also asks what kind of openings there might be in our encounters with history for interruptions, re-readings, and re-writings.Engaging texts spanning multiple genres and several centuries—from John Locke to Maurice Blanchot, from Hegel to Benjamin—Clift looks at experiences of time that exceed the historical narration of experiences said to have occurred in time. She focuses on the co-existence of multiple temporalities and opens up the quintessentially modern notion of historical succession to other possibilities. The alternatives she draws out include the mediations of language and narration, temporal leaps, oscillations and blockages, and the role played by contingency in representation. She argues that such alternatives compel us to reassess the ways we understand history and identity in a traumatic, or indeed in a post-traumatic, age.
The Common
by Antonio NegriThis final volume in Antonio Negri’s new trilogy aims to clarify and develop the ‘common’ as a key concept of radical thought. Here the term is understood in a double sense: on the one hand, as a collective of production and consumption in which the domination of capital has been completely realized; on the other hand, as the cooperation of workers and citizens and their assertion of political power. The maturation of this duality was the sign of the limits of capitalism in our age; the common showed itself as the active force that recomposed production, society and life in a new experience of freedom. Today the promise of freedom seems undermined by the very institutions founded to uphold it, as the charters of western democracy seek to prioritize individualism. Negri advocates instead a free society founded on the premise that the good life is to be collectively ordered – in other words, a society that elevates the common. In his vision, giving political expression to those who work and produce is the only way of overturning totalitarian exploitation and of enabling every citizen to participate in the development of the city. Like its companion volumes, this new collection of essays by Negri will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in radical politics and in the key social and political struggles of our time.
A Common Faith
by John Dewey Thomas M. AlexanderIn "A Common Faith, " eminent American philosopher John Dewey calls for the "emancipation of the true religious quality" from the heritage of dogmatism and supernaturalism that he believes characterizes historical religions. He describes how the depth of religious experience and the creative role of faith in the resources of experience to generate meaning and value can be cultivated without making cognitive claims that compete with or contend with scientific ones. <P><P> In a new introduction, Dewey scholar Thomas M. Alexander contextualizes the text for students and scholars by providing an overview of Dewey and his philosophy, key concepts in "A Common Faith, " and reactions to the text.
The Common Good: Rising of a New Dawn: How Living a More Conscious Life Can Heal a Nation One Heart, One Mind, One Thought at a Time
by Juanita S. FarrowAn inspiring guide about how our daily decisions can turn hate and fear into hope and love. The Common Good: Rising of a New Dawn will forever change how you see your neighbor. On this captivating spiritual journey through America, hear the stories of how ordinary people—people in the trenches devoted to the common good—are making an extraordinary difference in the lives of many. With passion, wit, and wisdom, Juanita Farrow discusses business, politics, and religion, and paints a compelling picture of how the common good is God&’s desire for America, and why it&’s good for America. Juanita Farrow states, &“We live in a great country, but far too often we allow our beliefs and egos to divide us in ways that become a form of paralysis that impacts the entire nation.&” Explore how the people in our lives and the experiences of our journey begin to shape our decisions and our view of the world. The Common Good speaks to people of faith and nonbelievers, and challenges everyone to look within for authentic purpose. It looks at pressing issues for Americans, but also the rising of a new dawn. Building the bridges to transcend differences will require a lot of heart. Creating a movement for the common good will be difficult, but even businesses, for instance, have found social entrepreneurship not only solves problems around the world, but is good for the bottom line. The Common Good describes how living a more conscious life can heal a nation—one heart, one mind, one thought at a time. A message of hope on how to turn fear into love, it can leave you feeling truly empowered—and inspired to make a difference.
The Common Good: Its Politics, Policies and Philosophy (Routledge Library Editions: Political Thought and Political Philosophy #49)
by Marcus G. RaskinFirst published in 1986. In this thought-provoking book the widely acclaimed thinker and activist, Marcus Raskin, moves beyond the limits and failures of socialism and capitalism to an original theory of social reconstruction for a humane society. Presenting concrete alternatives for education, health, economics and national security he develops a new conception of democracy and the rule of law in relation to our common good. A political and philosophic tool designed for those who search for alternatives in their lives and in the world, The Common Good shows how to organize for social reconstruction, the type of leadership now required, and the importance of restoring progress as a political purpose. Defining politics as broader than the mere manifestation of power, Raskin’s vision helps the left and liberals find their way towards a new public philosophy and program.
The Common Good
by Robert B. ReichFrom the best-selling author of Saving Capitalism and The Work of Nations, a passionate, clear-eyed manifesto on why we must restore the idea of the common good to the center of our economics and politics.With the warmth and lucidity that have made him one of our most important public voices, Robert B. Reich makes the case for a generous, inclusive understanding of the American project, centering on the moral obligations of citizenship. Rooting his argument in everyday reality and common sense, Reich demonstrates the existence of a common good, and argues that it is this that defines a society or a nation. Societies and nations undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce and build the common good, as well as vicious cycles that undermine it. Over the course of the past five decades, Reich contends, America has been in a slowly accelerating vicious cycle--one that can and must be reversed. But first we need to weigh what really matters, and how we as a country should relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth, and the meaning of leadership.Powerful, urgent, and utterly vital, this is a heartfelt missive from one of our foremost political thinkers: a fundamental statement about the purpose of society and a cri de coeur to save America's soul.
The Common Good: Chinese and American Perspectives
by David Solomon P. C. LoThis book addresses the Confucian philosophy of common good and deals with the comparative philosophy on eastern and western understandings of common good. The common good is an essentially contested concept in contemporary moral and political discussions. Although the notion of the common good has a slightly antique air, especially in the North Atlantic discussion, it has figured prominently in both the sophisticated theoretical accounts of moral and political theory in recent years and also in the popular arguments brought for particular political policies and for more general orientations toward policy. It has been at home both in the political arsenal of the left and the right and has had special significance in ethical and political debates in modern and modernizing cultures. This text will be of interest to philosophers interested in Chinese philosophy and issues related to individualism and communitarianism, ethicists and political philosophers, comparative philosophers, and those in religious studies working on Chinese religion.
Common Good and Self-Interest in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy (The New Synthese Historical Library #78)
by Heikki Haara Juhana ToivanenThis open access volume provides an in-depth analysis of philosophical discussions concerning the common good and its relation to self-interest in the history of Western philosophy. The thirteen chapters explore both renowned and lesser-known thinkers from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, covering also the relevant ancient background. By bridging the gap between the medieval and early modern periods, they provide fresh insights into how moral and political philosophers understood the concepts of the common good and self-interest, along with their ethical and political implications. The concept of the common good occupies a central role in philosophical reflections on the public and private dimensions of moral and social life in contemporary debates. By exploring the rich and diverse ways in which the relationship between the common good and self-interest has been understood, this volume has the potential to contribute to our ongoing efforts to critically discern the possibilities and limitations of these concepts in the present. Thus, the volume will be useful for scholars interested in the multi-layered role of the notion of the common good both in the history of philosophy and in contemporary moral and political philosophy.
Common Goods: Economy, Ecology, and Political Theology (Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquia)
by Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Catherine Keller, and Elias Ortega-AponteIn the face of globalized ecological and economic crises, how do religion, the postsecular, and political theology reconfigure political theory and practice? As the planet warms and the chasm widens between the 1 percent and the global 99, what thinking may yet energize new alliances between religious and irreligious constituencies?This book brings together political theorists, philosophers, theologians, and scholars of religion to open discursive and material spaces in which to shape a vibrant planetary commons. Attentive to the universalizing tendencies of “the common,” the contributors seek to reappropriate the term in response to the corporate logic that asserts itself as a universal solvent. In the resulting conversation, the common returns as an interlinked manifold, under the ethos of its multitudes and the ecology of its multiplicity.Beginning from what William Connolly calls the palpable “fragility of things,” Common Goods assembles a transdisciplinary political theology of the Earth. With a nuance missing from both atheist and orthodox religious approaches, the contributors engage in a multivocal conversation about sovereignty, capital, ecology, and civil society. The result is an unprecedented thematic assemblage of cosmopolitics and religious diversity; of utopian space and the time of insurrection; of Christian socialism, radical democracy, and disability theory; of quantum entanglement and planetarity; of theology fleshly and political.
The Common Growl: Toward a Poetics of Precarious Community (Commonalities)
by Thomas ClaviezNo longer able to read community in terms colored by a romantic nostalgia for homogeneity, closeness and sameness, or the myth of rational choice, we nevertheless face an imperative to think the common. The prominent scholars assembled here come together to articulate community while thinking seriously about the tropes, myths, narratives, metaphors, conceits, and shared cultural texts on which any such articulation depends. The result is a major contribution to literary theory, postcolonialism, philosophy, political theory, and sociology.
Common Hegemony, Populism, and the New Municipalism: Democratic Alter-Politics and Transformative Strategies (Routledge Advances in Democratic Theory)
by Alexandros KioupkiolisCommon Hegemony, Populism, and the New Municipalism critically explores the global rise of an alternative democratic politics since the 1990s in both practice and theory, from the Zapatistas’ insurrection to the 2011 cycle of democratic contestation and the ensuing municipalist movement in Spain. Staging an alternative to mainstream politics in both its statist and its activist variants, Alexandros Kioupkiolis combines a comprehensive and in-depth account of contemporary alter-politics with an extensive treatment of strategic challenges and broaches the question of strategy through theories of hegemony which are revisited and renewed by taking our lead from contemporary social movements and practices. Specific movements such as 15-M, and new municipalism, are examined to understand how these have transfigured the counter-hegemonic politics in the direction of egalitarianism, diversity, and grassroots self-government. Common Hegemony, Populism, and the New Municipalism will be of interest to researchers and students of contemporary political theory, democratic theory, and social movement studies.
A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice
by Raimond GaitaThe Holocaust and attempts to deny it, racism, murder, the case of Mary Bell. How can we include these and countless other examples of evil within our vision of a common humanity? These painful human incongruities are precisely what Raimond Gaita boldly harmonizes in his powerful new book, A Common Humanity.Hatred with forgiveness, evil with love, suffering with compassion, and the mundane with the precious. Gaita asserts that our conception of humanity cannot be based upon the empty language of individual rights when it is our shared feelings of grief, hope, love, guilt, shame and remorse that offer a more potent foundation for common understanding. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, Simon Weil, Primo Levi, George Orwell, Iris Murdoch and Sigmund Freud, Gaita creates a beautifully written and provocative new picture of our common humanity.
Common Immunity: Biopolitics in the Age of the Pandemic
by Roberto EspositoAfter two years of global pandemic, it is no surprise that immunization is now at the center of our experience. From the medicalization of politics to the disciplining of individuals, from lockdowns to mass vaccination programs, contemporary societies seem to be firmly embedded in a syndrome of immunity. To understand the ambivalent effects of this development, it is necessary to go back to its modern genesis, when the languages of law, politics, and medicine began to merge into the biopolitical regime we have been living under for some time. This regime places a high priority on immunization and security: no security is more important than health security. The Covid-19 pandemic has taken the dynamic of immunization to a new level: for the first time in history, we see societies seeking to achieve generalized immunity in their entire populations through vaccination. This allows us to glimpse the possibility of a “common immunity” that strengthens the relation between community and immunity. The dramatic tensions we have experienced in recent years between security and freedom, norm and exception, power and existence, all refer to the complex relationship between community and immunity, the decisive features of which are reconstructed in this book. Building on the prescient argument originally developed two decades ago in Immunitas, Roberto Esposito demonstrates in this new book how the pandemic and our responses to it have brought into sharp relief the fundamental biopolitical conditions of our contemporary societies.
Common Law – Civil Law: The Great Divide? (Law and Philosophy Library #139)
by Nicoletta Bersier Christoph Bezemek Frederick SchauerThis book offers an in-depth analysis of the differences between common law and civil law systems from various theoretical perspectives. Written by a global network of experts, it explores the topic against the background of a variety of legal traditions.Common law and civil law are typically presented as antagonistic players on a field claimed by diverse legal systems: the former being based on precedent set by judges in deciding cases before them; the latter being founded on a set of rules intended to govern the decisions of those applying them. Perceived in this manner, common law and civil law differ in terms of the (main) source(s) of law; who is to create them; who is (merely) to draw from them; and whether the law itself is pure each step of the way, or whether the law’s purity may be tarnished when confronted with a set of contingent facts. These differences have deep roots in (legal) history – roots that allow us to trace them back to distinct traditions. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether the divide thus depicted is as great as it may seem: international and supranational legal systems unconcerned by national peculiarities appear to level the playing field. A normative understanding of constitutions seems to grant ever-greater authority to High Court decisions based on thinly worded maxims in countries that adhere to the civil law tradition. The challenges contemporary regulation faces call for ever-more detailed statutes governing the decisions of judges in the common law tradition. These and similar observations demand a structural reassessment of the role of judges, the power of precedent, the limits of legislation and other features often thought to be so different in common and civil law systems. The book addresses this reassessment.
Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance
by Alexander ZaitchikWho is this guy and why are people listening? Forget Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity--Glenn Beck is the right's new media darling and the unofficial leader of the conservative grassroots. Lampooned by the left and lionized by the far right, his bluster-and-tears brand of political commentary has commandeered attention on both sides of the aisle. Glenn Beck has emerged over the last decade as a unique and bizarre conservative icon for the new century. He fantasizes aloud about killing his political opponents and encourages his listeners to embrace a cynical paranoia that slides easily into a fantasyland filled with enemies that do not exist, and solutions that are incoherent, at best. Since the election of Barack Obama, Beck's bombastic, conspiratorial, and often viciously personal approach to political combat has made him one of the most controversial figures in the history of American broadcasting. In Common Nonsense, investigative reporter Alexander Zaitchik explores Beck's strange brew of ratings lust, boundless ego, conspiratorial hard-right politics, and gimmicky morning-radio entertainment chops. Separates the facts from the fiction, following Beck from his troubled childhood to his recent rise to the top of the conservative media heap. Zaitchik's recent three-part series in Salon caused so much buzz, Beck felt the need to attack it on his show. Based on Zaitchik's interviews with former Beck coworkers and review of countless Beck writings and television and radio shows. Examines Beck's high-profile obsessions (Acorn and Van Jones) as well as his lesser-known influences (obscure Mormon radicals like Cleon Skousen.) Zaitchik's writing has appeared in the New Republic, the Nation, Salon, Wired, the New York Times, and AlternetBeck, a perverse and high-impact media spectacle, has emerged as a leader in a conservative protest movement that raises troubling questions about the health of American democracy.
The Common Reader: First Series, Annotated Edition (The Common Reader #1)
by Virginia WoolfA collection of essays from the acclaimed author of Mrs. Dalloway on such subjects as Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, and her own literary philosophy. A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out. Not written for scholars or critics, these essays are a collection of Virginia Woolf&’s everyday thoughts about literature and the world—and the art of reading for pleasure. That many of them previously appeared in such publications as the Nation, Vogue, and the Yale Review points to their widespread appeal. Still, her brilliant powers of observation and insatiable curiosity shine through . . . &“After all, Mrs. Woolf is no common reader, try as she may to be one. Her powers of coordination and logical inference are altogether too strong and capable. No common reader would kick the over-praised Robinson Crusoe overboard to float in seas of adolescent adoration for Moll Flanders, as she does. It would take an uncommon common reader to discourse as pithily on Elizabethan drama or the furiously literary Duchess of Newcastle. No idle peruser of the printed page would meditate so beautifully on Greek letters. And when we come to those essays, &‘Modern Fiction&’ and &‘How It Strikes a Contemporary,&’ a note that is altogether professional and the result of intensive study and theorizing is to be discerned.&” —The New York Times &“Woolf&’s provocative collection of essays, reviews and flights of literary imagination assesses both the famous and the obscure.&” —The Times (London)
Common Scents: Poetry, Modernity, and a Revolution of the Senses (SUNY series, Literature . . . in Theory)
by Jonas RosenbrückThe sense of smell has long been the most neglected of the human senses in literature. Common Scents sets out to undo this forgetting of olfactory sense-making by tracing the appearance of odors in modern German and French poetry. Jonas Rosenbrück argues that smell's persistence undermines modernity's self-image as an ocular age and shows how scents index a veritable "revolution of the senses." Such a revolution, as a redistribution of the senses, would make the common and shared character of our existence in scented atmospheres perceptible.Bringing contemporary ecocritical interest in atmospheres, air, and the senses into dialogue with literary criticism, theories of modernity, and political philosophy, Common Scents provides novel interpretations of figures such as Friedrich Hölderlin, Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertolt Brecht. These readings demonstrate how all terrestrial life is interlinked in the aerial commons that escapes the privatizing grasp of what Karl Marx called the "sense of having." Reformulating Bruno Latour, Rosenbrück argues that we have never been deodorized. In attending to this fact, Common Scents reconfigures subjectivity, corporeality, and politics.
The Common Scientist of the Seventeenth Century: A Study of the Dublin Philosophical Society, 1683-1708 (Routledge Library Editions: History & Philosophy of Science)
by K Theodore HoppenLearned societies, such as the Royal Society of London and the Dublin Philosophical Society were a central feature of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. This volume shows that a study of the work and membership of these groups is essential before any realistic assessment can be made of the scientific world at this time. Based on a wide range of manuscript and other sources, this book illuminates, by means of an examination of a particular group of natural philosophers, on problems of general interest to all those concerned with the wider aspects of science in this period.
Common Sense: Addressed To The Inhabitants Of America
by Thomas PaineThomas Paine’s Common Sense is one of the most important and often assigned primary documents of the Revolutionary era. This edition of the pamphlet is unique in its inclusion of selections from Paine’s other writings from 1775 and 1776 — additional essays that contextualize Common Sense and provide unusual insight on both the writer and the cause for which he wrote. The volume introduction includes coverage of Paine’s childhood and early adult years in England, arguing for the significance of personal experience, environment, career, and religion in understanding Paine’s influential political writings. The volume also includes a glossary, a chronology, 12 illustrations, a selected bibliography, and questions for consideration.
Common Sense
by Thomas Paine". . . well orated by reader George Vafiadis. The language and sentiment are not as outmoded as some listeners might expect and it definitely feels patriotic to hear again the fundamentals of America's beginnings. " - - Kliatt MagazineGeorge Washington wrote, "I find that Common Sense is working a powerful change there (Virginia) in the minds of many men. " The passion of the patriot Thomas Paine comes straight on and one can better understand the forces that shaped this country. Thomas Painewas born in Thetford, England, in 1737. His father was a staymaker. Thomas worked as a tax collector and was let go for petitioning for higher pay. Benjamin Franklin encouraged him to emigrate to the United States in 1774, where he published a series of pamphlets called the American Crisis. In 1787 he went back to Europe and published political books that were publically burned. He went to France and helped draft the French constitution. He was imprisoned for a year before coming back to the United States. He died in 1809.