In contemporary culture, there is no stronger imperative than to be authentic. But what does authenticity actually mean? Everywhere we turn, we are urged to "live our truth": an element of Western culture that is almost never questioned. Authenticity in all its contexts is becoming more significant than ever as digital culture breeds fakery and capitalism offers the illusion of infinite choice. In this climate, finding and being yourself is a more complex idea than it sounds - one that should not necessarily be taken as doctrine. In this set of six sharp, lively essays, the writer and journalist Emily Bootle explores how authenticity has pervaded every facet of our culture, from modern celebrity and identity politics to Instagram captions and wellness. Blending pop culture and philosophy, this book dismantles the ideology surrounding being ourselves at all costs, and questions what fuels our authenticity obsession.

VY Mudimbe: Undisciplined Africanism is the first English-language monograph dedicated to the work of Valentin Yves Mudimbe. This book charts the intellectual history of the seminal Congolese philosopher, epistemologist, and philologist from the late 1960s to the present day, exploring his major essays and novels. Pierre-Philippe Fraiture highlights Mudimbe's trajectory through major debates on African nationalism, Panafricanism, neo-colonialism, negritude, pedagogy, Christianisation, decolonisation, anthropology, postcolonial representations, and a variety of other subjects, using these as contexts for close readings of many of Mudimbe's texts, both influential and lesser-known. The book demonstrates that Mudimbe's intellectual career has been informed by a series of decisive dialogues with some of the key exponents of Africanism (Herodotus, EW Blyden, Placide Tempels), continental and postcolonial thought (Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Claude Levi-Strauss), and African thought and philosophy from Africa and the diaspora (L.S. Senghor, Patrice Nganang, and Achille Mbembe).

Research on the emotions is proliferating in philosophy and the hard cognitive sciences and has cognate, areas of interest in sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines. The Routledge Handbook of Emotion Theory brings together advances on foundational issues from this widespread field, synthesizing work for a broad readership of advanced students and researchers. Focusing on the groundwork of theoretical research, the volume is a required resource for anyone working in emotions research. The Handbook includes 51 chapters--written exclusively for this volume by an interdisciplinary team of scholars--a general introduction, comprehensive bibliography, and detailed subject index. It is written and edited for a multidisciplinary audience of advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers across a multitude of disciplines.

Toleration is one of the most studied concepts in contemporary political theory and philosophy, yet the range of contemporary normative prescriptions concerning how to do toleration or how to be tolerant is remarkably narrow and limited. The literature is largely dominated by a neo-Kantian moral-juridical frame, in which toleration is a matter to be decided in terms of constitutional rights. According to this framework, cooperation equates to public reasonableness and willingness to engage in certain types of civil moral dialogue. Crucially, this vision of politics makes no claims about how to cultivate and secure the conditions required to make cooperation possible in the first place. It also has little to say about how to motivate one to become a tolerant person. Instead it offers highly abstract ideas that do not by themselves suggest what political activity is required to negotiate overlapping values and interests in which cooperation is not already assured. Contemporary thinking about toleration indicates, paradoxically, an intolerance of politics. Montaigne and the Tolerance of Politics argues for toleration as a practice of negotiation, looking to a philosopher not usually considered political: Michel de Montaigne. For Montaigne, toleration is an expansive, active practice of political endurance in negotiating public goods across lines of value difference. In other words, to be tolerant means to possess a particular set of political capacities for negotiation. What matters most is not how we talk to our political opponents, but that we talk to each other across lines of disagreement. Douglas I. Thompson draws on Montaigne's Essais to recover the idea that political negotiation grows out of genuine care for public goods and the establishment of political trust. He argues that we need a Montaignian conception of toleration today if we are to negotiate effectively the circumstances of increasing political polarization and ongoing value conflict, and he applies this notion to current debates in political theory as well as contemporary issues, including the problem of migration and refugee asylum. Additionally, for Montaigne scholars, he reads the Essais principally as a work of public political education, and resituates the work as an extension of Montaigne's political activity as a high-level negotiator between Catholic and Huguenot parties during the French Wars of Religion. Ultimately, this book argues that Montaigne's view of tolerance is worth recovering and reconsidering in contemporary democratic societies where political leaders and ordinary citizens are becoming less able to talk to each other to resolve political conflicts and work for shared public goods.

In book two of this four-volume work, Alexander explains in detail the kinds of process that are capable of generating living structure. The unfolding of living structure in natural systems is compared to the unfolding of buildings and town plans in traditional society, and then contrasted with present-day building processes. The comparison reveals deep and shocking problems which pervade the present day planning and construction of buildings. Pervasive changes are needed to create a world in which living process - and hence living structure - are possible; these are changes which are ultimately attainable only through a transformation of society. It is the use of sequences which makes it possible for each building to become unique, exactly fitted to its context, and harmonious. And it is also this use of sequences which makes it possible for people to participate effectively in the layout of their own buildings and communities